


somebody to love

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (WHICH ENDS VERY SOON DON'T WORRY), (well idk it pROBABLY qualifies for slow burn), Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Meet the Family, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Joffrey Baratheon/Sansa Stark, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SanSan Secret Santa 2018, Scars, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, also apologies to jon for falling back on my favorite tragic backstory hc, bronn isn't even technically in this fic but I had to tag him for reasons, idek guys have some fluff here, sandor clegane's patented hatred of fire in any universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 19:04:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17106380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “Excuse me,” Robb says, “after that arse Joffrey maybe I wanted to be sure this wasn’t another very bad life choice.”“Oh, for — Robb, that’s sweet, but he’s the guy who warned me to dump his ass, so maybe you could have, you know, called before showing up with the cavalry?”At that, Robb looks mortified —For one single second.“Couldn’t you have just said?” He grins, and then she’s sure he doesn’t try to pat Sandor on the back or something because the body language is screaming don’t, but his entire attitude changes in a moment. “Man, did you really warn her off that prick?”Or: where Sansa Stark's first boyfriend turns out to be an extremely bad choice, but it eventually brings someone much, much better into her life.





	somebody to love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stark_Knight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stark_Knight/gifts).



> ... HELLO EVERYONE and welcome to my humble contribution for this year's [sansan secret sansa on tumblr](https://sansansecretsanta.tumblr.com/); my prompt from the lovely amphipolitan was _the men in her life_ and as it's probably obvious it... REALLY SPIRALED OUT OF MY CONTROL. Ops. And since tackling it in canon was going to kill me with angst and we settled on fluff... here, have a probably illegal amount of the tooth-rotting kind (eventually). Sorry in advance for the dentist's bill guys, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED HERE. I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays!! <3 ~~(also: sorry if sandor shows up like 4k into this I DON'T EVEN KNOW SORRY I NEEDED BUILD-UP)~~
> 
> In less fun news: I own absolutely zilch here, the title is from Queen as everyone probably guessed already ~~sorry guys the biopic ruined me you're getting queen titles for the next six months~~ , they sadly don't belong to me and I'll leave this monster here and saunter not so very vaguely downwards. /o\

In one of Sansa’s first memories that really stick with her, she’s about six years old, staring at herself in the mirror of a small clothes shop, wearing an ugly brown dress that her aunt Lysa insisted she’d try on. It’s supposed to be her Christmas present — her father drove Sansa, Robb and Jon along with their aunt

(Robb is supposed to pick something from the nearby toy shop later, Jon isn’t, and Sansa has wondered _why_ he wasn’t getting anything. She will ask later.)

Right now she’s looking at her own reflection.

And she thinks she really _doesn’t_ like the dress. It’s uncomfortable, too tight, and she doesn’t like the color — brown _sucks_ , okay? — and she wants to ask if she can try on another.

“But look at how _darling_ it is,” Aunt Lysa says from behind her, staring at her. “It fits you _so_ well!”

The words get stuck in Sansa’s throat. She knows that it wouldn’t be polite to say no, and well, fine, she doesn’t like that dress, but she can just pretend she does and then never wear it. Sure, she had been excited to get a new one — she _loves_ dresses, they’re her favorite — but she doesn’t want to sound rude or make anyone angry. She’ll just nod along and agree —

“She hates it,” Jon whispers to Robb from where he’s standing on the side, and Sansa notices Robb nodding eagerly at that.

“Sorry, what did you just say?” Aunt Lysa asks, turning towards the both of them. Jon goes slightly paler in the face and his mouth turns into a thin line, but Robb merely clears his throat and looks up at her.

“Oh, it was nothing,” he says, “but I was just thinking, maybe she’d look nicer in blue? Dunno, that color isn’t so great.”

“Robb,” she replies, sounding a bit condescending, “I don’t think it’s a boys’s thing. It _does_ look good on her, trust people who know better.”

Robb makes some kind of noise that could be agreement or not, then shrugs at Jon when Aunt Lysa’s attention goes back to the sales assistant, and then Dad walks into the shop.

“At which point are we?” He asks, and then looks at Sansa, and she can immediately see that he doesn’t like that dress either.

“Doesn’t it fit her so _well_?” Aunt Lysa asks.

“Hm,” Dad replies. “I _guess_.”

“I think that color sucks,” Robb immediately says. The sales assistant laughs behind her hand, Dad glares at him slightly less strongly than Aunt Lysa and tells him something about _language_ and Jon says nothing, but he’s kind of smiling just slightly.

Sansa keeps on staring at her own reflection and thinks that yes, Robb’s right — that color _sucks_.

Then Dad kneels down next to her. “In between the two of us,” he whispers, “do _you_ like it or not?”

“I — I dunno,” she whispers back. “It might be rude if I said.”

“Sansa, it’s a _dress_ and _you_ have to wear it. Just tell me, I’ll handle it.”

She glances nervously at her left, then lets her voice drop slightly lower. “Not really. Robb’s right, the color’s not nice. And it just sticks weird.”

Dad nods, then clears his throat. “You know what, how many dresses have you tried yet?”

“Just this one,” she says.

“Well, I think we have time to try on some more and see if maybe there’s one that’s a bit less tight on the back? I mean, Lysa, it’s really nice,” he says, “but if it’s _that_ tight on her now, she’ll outgrow it in six months.”

Aunt Lysa has to grudgingly agree, and she asks if they have another in a larger size. The sales assistant, who has most likely guessed that Sansa does _not_ want that one dress, says no and brings out a few more to show them. Robb only comments on the colors, and she does try on a few more that she likes better, until Jon, who had been going off on his own looking through the racks asks in a small voice, _and what about this one?_

Dad goes to get it, and —

Oh.

It’s with short sleeves, a deep shade of blue with small red flowers printed all over it, with a bow to tie it in the back, and Sansa _loves_ it at first sight.

“I think we should try that,” Dad says, and helps her put it on same as the others, and when Sansa looks at it in the mirror she decides it’s _perfect_ — it’s not too large on her but not even tight, which means she’ll be able to wear it for a long time, the color is so nice, and she loves the flowers blooming all over the skirt and sleeves, and the bow is just so _nice_.

“So,” Dad asks, “which one do you like best?”

“This one,” she says at once. “Please?”

Aunt Lysa doesn’t protest, says that it looked a bit too frilly but if that other one wasn’t available, _all_ the others were frilly anyway, so why not, and she pays for it. The sales assistant packs it and they leave the shop with Dad holding the bag. They get back into the car — Aunt Lysa gets into the passenger seat and Sansa is in between Robb and Jon. They should drive to the toy shop now.

As the car starts, Robb leans down. “You know,” he tells her, “you don’t have to lie just because it might look rude.”

Sansa turns to look at him. “But —”

“Hey, _you_ had to wear that. I get not wanting to piss Aunt Lysa off, but if you don’t like something it’s fine if you say it.”

She nods, even if she doesn’t ask why _Jon_ didn’t do it, then.

At the toy shop, she sticks to Dad while Robb drags Jon with him even if Aunt Lysa doesn’t look too happy about it, then he picks an action figure set that has both Han Solo and Chewie. Sansa thinks Leia is way cooler than either of them, but it’s _Robb’s_ gift, not hers, so she says nothing.

She also says nothing when, back in the car, she sees Robb slipping the Han toy to Jon.

She doesn’t ask what it was about.

But the way Robb told her that _she didn’t have to lie because it might look rude_ just… sticks with her. She can’t stop thinking about it as she goes to bed later that night, nor the following morning.

She never considered it before — she hates the idea of being rude.

Still — _maybe_ , she thinks looking at her nice, comfortable dress hung up in the closet, he might have been right.

——

When she’s eight, Jon comes back home from a non-better specified weekend of school trip (or so she was told) earlier than planned. For that matter, he comes back home on their parents’s car, with what looks like a pretty bad burn on his hand — the trip was from the ER, apparently.

“That wasn’t a school trip,” she asks Robb while Arya asks _how_ it happened and their father most obviously likes about it having been an accident in the hotel’s kitchen, “was it?”

Robb looks at her with sad, blue eyes. “No,” he says. “But — I can’t tell you if he doesn’t say I can first.”

“… Robb, _what_ are you all hiding?”

Robb shakes his head. “I’ve told them months ago that we should have just told you, but — never mind. I’ll talk to them.”

“Is there something dangerous going on?” She asks.

“Not really. It’s just — messy. Never mind. I swear I’ll let you know as soon as possible, all right?”

Sansa, who has never had any reason to doubt her brother once in her life and who remembers all the times Robb came home with some write-up from his teacher informing his parents that he got into some fight involving people being terrible to Jon and not to _him_ , decides he deserves the benefit of the doubt and agrees.

Two hours later, Robb tells her to come to Dad’s study, they will tell her whatever it is that’s going on.

“What’s going on?” She asks as soon as she sits down in front of both Robb and her father. “And where’s Jon?”

“Sleeping it off,” Dad says. “He’s with Arya and your mother. So, I guess you figured out that was _not_ a school trip.”

“That _never_ happened on any school trip that I know of,” Sansa says.

Her father takes a breath and then she finds out that Jon is _not_ Uncle Brandon’s, as she and Arya and Bran have known up until this point.

“He’s _aunt Lyanna’_ s?” Sansa asks.

“Yes,” Dad sighs.

“But — I’ve only ever seen her in _pictures_!”

“That’s because she and — Jon’s father, they haven’t lived in the country since he was five or so.”

_Then_ she learns that they apparently figured out it was too soon for having children _after_ having had one and left him with them when they decided to change their lives upside down and move somewhere in South America, but since Jon’s father’s family is apparently insane rich noble people they had an agreement that he’d have to visit them once per month, and so _that_ was the school trip excuse.

“But _why_ couldn’t you just tell us straight?” Sansa asks.

“I wish,” Dad says, “but that agreement was — the less said about it the better. Basically we agreed to not tell _you_ because they didn’t want contact with any other relatives of your aunt’s that weren’t… well, us and Robb, because _he_ would remember it. And about the burn, well, Jon’s grandfather is — _not well_ would be putting it nicely.”

“What? _He_ did that?”

Dad nods. “He’s never been _well_ , but lately he’s gotten worse and from what Jon says he went on a rant about purifying all rotten blood from his descendants. Of course we’re going to renegotiate the agreement and he’s not going back there ever again, so I guess that at this point we might as well tell all of you, but — I’m honestly sorry for not having done it before. But in case he sued, well, I don’t happen to have the lawyers Aerys can afford.”

Sansa nods, feeling like she might vomit. “I get it,” she says. “How bad is it?”

Robb shrugs. “Well, he’ll need to stay home a week or so at least, but at least it didn’t, you know, damage the hand for good.” He sounds murderous, and suddenly Sansa can put together _why_ Aunt Lysa doesn’t like that he lives with them and why Robb would slip him half of his Christmas presents and so on.

Oh, she understands it even too well.

——

For the next week or so, she doesn’t manage to talk to Jon on her own because he barely leaves his room and only lets either Robb or their parents in — Arya takes it fairly personally, and when she’s told that’s because he doesn’t want either them or Bran to see the burn she mutters something about being perfectly able to handle it, but she doesn’t push it.

Then it happens that one afternoon she’s the only other person in the house — everyone else is at Arya’s martial arts tournament, and she’s walking outside Jon’s room when she hears him cursing.

Loudly.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he says, all over, and Sansa knocks on the door.

“Jon? Can I help you?”

For a moment, there’s no answer, then — “Maybe,” he says, sounding tired. “Could you wash your hands before coming in?”

“Sure.”

She goes to the nearest bathroom, washes her hands accurately and finds the door open already.

Then she walks inside and she immediately sees what’s the problem — he had tried to change his own bandages but his injured hand is shaking a lot and both bandages and cream fell on the ground. She glances at his right hand and she can’t help grimacing — the entire surface is covered in blisters and it must hurt a whole lot. There’s also no way it won’t scar later, she thinks.

“Sorry,” he says, “I… was hoping to not have any of you see it, but — I can’t have it in the open.” He sounds like he’s ashamed of it, and she immediately shakes her head.

“It’s — it’s fine,” she says. “It wasn’t your fault. And — it’s nice of you, but we would have had to see it at some point.”

“Maybe after it scarred,” he sighs.

“What should I do?” She asks, trying to get him to change the topic — she doesn’t like how gloomy he sounds.

“Oh. Right. Uh, grab that cream and some of that gauze. And the bandages. You need to put the cream on it, just lightly, then the gauze and then wrap it up. Not too tight, possibly.”

She nods. “Okay. It doesn’t sound too complicated.”

He snorts a little as she pours cream on her fingertips and spreads it all over the top of his hand and his palm when he turns it.

“Is it just… outside?” She asks as she takes care to not press too much on the blisters and to school her face on being neutral — they feel _strange_ , but she’s not going to make him feel worse about it when he already seems mortified.

“You mean, if I can use the hand after they heal? Yeah,” he says, “they said it only damaged, well, the skin.”

She runs her hands on his wrist, too — the burns stop just beyond it. When she’s satisfied that the cream is covering the entire surface, she grabs the gauze from the pack and starts applying it over his fingers and on the rest of the burned skin.

“Good,” she says. “And — I’m sorry it happened.”

“Thanks,” he sighs. “I always knew he was out of his mind, but I was just hoping he’d ignore me and go on with his life.” Jon shakes his head. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before but well, I guess Dad told you the reasons?”

“He did,” Sansa agrees. “I get it. I mean, it wasn’t… nice, but I get it. Stay still, I need to wrap it.”

“Right. Sorry, I just — Arya is hating this, isn’t she?”

“She’s pissed at you,” Sansa informs him. “And not because we didn’t know about your parents, it’s because she doesn’t think she’d chicken out at seeing your hand, so you might want to rethink it.”

“I guess,” he sighs. “I just — didn’t really want any of you to know either. I mean, that side of the family is _bad_ and I already wish _Robb_ didn’t know.”

“Couldn’t avoid it?” She asks as she wraps the gauze carefully.

“Well, he was old enough to remember when I came to live here, and he was at a few of the court hearings, so — no. Anyway, at least something good came out of it.”

“Of _burning your entire hand_?”

“Hey, I don’t have to see them anymore. It’s not that bad a bargain.”

Sansa doesn’t think it’s as funny as he’s making it to be, but she figures that it wouldn’t be nice to point it out, so she ties the bandage and moves her hands away. “Does it hold?”

He turns his hand over once, twice, then bends his fingers slightly. It stays in place. “It does. You have a career in front of you,” he jokes, even if it comes out not too sure.

“Thank you,” she tells him, “but I mean, if you need help with it, you can ask.”

“You don’t have to. It was enough that you did it this once, really —”

“Jon, _honestly_ , I did it once, it was… _weird_ , but nothing terrible. If no one else is around I can do it again. Really.”

For a moment he looks up at her with those grey eyes that are just like Dad’s and Arya’s and honestly, and when she sees a couple of stray tears falling down his face she shakes his head and pulls him into a hug — he returns it just with the left arm, but it’s obvious he appreciates it because he doesn’t move, and neither does she, not for a long time.

——

She ends up helping him with that hand more than once, later. Her skills at handling bandages get better and by the time he can do without she’s gotten pretty good at it.

Sansa also doesn’t miss how from that point on he never leaves the house without gloves — she and Robb do try half-heartedly to convince him there’s nothing wrong with that hand, but it doesn’t work and they give up on it.

Still. It’s not his fault, it should have never happened, it’s unfair that he thinks he should hide it because other people might not like it, Sansa thinks.

She never quite gathers the guts to tell him, but she thinks that, indeed.

——

_It’s unfair_ is the first thought that comes to her the moment when, at sixteen, she’s standing in another hospital corridor as the entire family is told that Bran _did_ survive a drunk asshole hitting him with his car and then running away as he was coming back from climbing practice but that he’s paralyzed from the waist down.

The second thought is _at least he’s going to live_ , and since everyone else about bursts out in relieved tears the moment they hear it, she figures it was a shared sentiment.

Bran comes back home a month later, spends another one only moving around for physical therapy and barely talking to anyone who’s not their parents, and then after at some point Robb goes to talk to him he says he wants to go back to school and that he’s done feeling sorry for himself, which — well, no one would have put it like that and no one was expecting him to bounce back immediately, but Sansa is just relieved that he seems to be holding up fine, bar the obvious.

So maybe when they’re both around the house she takes care to spare him extra effort — she’ll make sure he has whatever food he wants to get heated and within his reach before dinner, if her mother can’t handle it, figuring that there’s no point in making his life harder.

Until one evening she takes a study break to go down to the kitchen and finds him heating up some popcorn in the microwave, which is on a shelf that he can reach but not too comfortably.

“You could have called,” she says. “I mean, if you needed help —“

“That’s why I didn’t, actually?” He answers, and he sounds _kind_ of annoyed, and he notices that she hadn’t been expecting it because a moment later he makes a contrite face and shakes his head after starting on the microwave. “Sorry, that came out — bad. But like… Sansa, I know you have good intentions and so has Mom and I _get_ it, but… if it’s stuff I _can’t_ do, fine, but if it’s stuff I _can_ with some effort, can I just do it myself? I hate this already, but feeling like I can’t apparently heat my own food anymore doesn’t help.”

_Oh_. She hadn’t even thought about _that_ , true enough. “I… didn’t think of that,” she admits. “But I just wanted to make things easier.”

“I know,” he replies, “and I know you mean well, but — don’t. I already have enough of that crap at school and I swear, next time someone comes up to me telling me they feel so sorry and then promptly _don’t_ invite me to their birthday party as the previous years I’m going to run them over. Or worse off, letting me go first and stuff because they feel _sorry_ but then there’s like, three people who’ll sit at my table during lunch, as if this is contagious. It makes you feel like a charity case. I’m not going to tell Mom anytime soon because I mean, I _get_ it and she was scared shitless that I’d be dead after the surgery, but with you and the others — can you just do stuff for me if it’s anything I _really_ can’t manage on my own? I don’t need things to be easier, I need them to be _normal_.”

“And that’s why I’m not helping you bring over the popcorn,” Rickon says from the sofa where he’s perched on — right, they’re probably going to have one of their video games afternoons which _somehow_ always happen on days where both their parents are out and won’t be back until late. Sansa is sure that whatever they’re playing is _not_ age-appropriate, but Rickon was reading horror comics without their parents noticing a long time ago, none of them ever ratted him out and he doesn’t seem to have issues because of that yet, so… she’s going to keep to for herself.

“I didn’t ask you!” Bran shouts back as he waits for the microwave to finish.

“And I’m not letting you win either. Not even the tryout game.”

“Good thing _someone_ doesn’t let me win,” Bran quips back, not hiding how that conversation is making him _extremely_ glad.

Sansa was about to say she should bring the popcorn over, but then she realizes it would be exactly what neither of them want, so she settles on opening the microwave’s door and handing Bran the bowl since it _really_ was too tall and it might have toppled over.

“Well, have fun,” she says, dropping it in his hands. “And don’t tell me what that game is, the less I know the better.”

It’s no good, because when she comes back down again to grab some water two hours later Rickon is bragging about having kicked Bran’s ass at GTA and that’s way more than she needed to know, but Bran doesn’t look too broken up about it.

If anything, it does teach her to offer help at all costs when she isn’t asked for it, but — it was a fair point. She just, hadn’t really thought about it in those terms.

She knows she will, from now on.

——

Sansa meets Joffrey Lannister in the last year of her bachelor’s. They’re paired together for a project in History of Theater class, which Sansa loves but someone decided is obligatory for people studying economics, like him. He’s studying business management, so this class is more her thing than his, and she’s immediately charmed — he has gorgeous golden hair, green eyes and a killer smile and he’s always dressing spotlessly; the first day of class he shows up in a pair of dark jeans and a burgundy shirt that certainly compliment him, and Sansa _might_ be a bit intimidated when they get paired up, but he’s nice and they agree on meeting in the library the next day to work on their project.

She immediately calls Jeyne to tell her all about it — her best friend since elementary school is going to fashion school so they aren’t in class together anymore but they’ve kept contact throughout the years and they _did_ share a miserable time in high school where they’d pine after guys but they’d never look at them back.

(Jeyne wasn’t apparently _hot enough_ and she had a fairly horrible experience with one guy at a party that Robb’s best friend Theon had apparently saved her in the nick of time from, or so Sansa was told, they never went into details, and people did actually ask Sansa out, but the moment they found out who her relatives were and said fairly insensitive things about either Jon or Bran or Arya she never looked at them twice. So, neither of them actually had any of those sweeping romances they had liked to imagine falling into when they were kids. Not yet.)

They make plans to meet up for coffee and discuss it, and Sansa can’t help keeping the excitement from her voice.

“You know, he’s… so hot,” she groans. “And he was so _nice_ today.”

“And you’re meeting him tomorrow?” Jeyne winks back.

“Yes. And through the next two months, I think. We have to make that presentation at the end of the semester and it’s half the grade, so…”

“Well,” Jeyne says, “I should hope you’ll make good use of your time. Believe me, I didn’t think going for it was something I had in me, but since I decided I could, _well_ , it’s been great.”

Sansa’s known all of that for a while — this guy Beric she met in photography class has been really good for her, and they’ve been together two years, but Jeyne was the one putting the move on him. Theon apparently kicked her into doing it — they go to the same school. And she hasn’t regretted it since, so — maybe… maybe she _should_.

“I might try,” she says. She knows she’s blushing wildly, but that’s not the point now. “God, he’s just — so — _extra_ , you know?”

“Hey,” Jeyne says, “it’s not as if you’re not a good catch. Let me know how it goes, all right?”

“Sure I will,” Sansa says.

Her heart is beating very, very fast at the thought, but it’s not the _bad_ kind of adrenaline that’s running through her stomach.

Not at all.

——

They kiss in the library’s bathroom one week into the project work, in a moment when no one is there — there had been _tension_ before, and she had asked him if maybe they could get a drink later, and he had looked at her and said, _how about we go to the men’s room in five, the librarian might throw us out_.

Joffrey is a _very_ good kisser. He also accepts the offer for drinks.

They don’t do anything else that day, but when Sansa comes back home, Bran asks her if she’s floating on air or what, and Arya makes gagging noises when she says Joffrey was _the best_ , and everyone else compliments her and her parents tell her to bring him to dinner one of these days.

She says maybe after she sees if it’s serious or not, but she’s been literally the _only_ one in the family who hasn’t ever brought over a significant other for dinner (bar Rickon, who at fourteen is too busy with his Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band to care about girls or so he says) and — she’s _excited to_ , all right?

——

She invites Joffrey over for dinner one month into their partnership. It goes _well_ , even if not _splendidly_ — he’s polite, and her brothers are also polite, and he’s not an ass to Bran which is a good thing already, but she can sense that Robb doesn’t really like him that much even if he tries to not make it show. Jon is more silent than usual, but then again they don’t really interact in the first place, everyone else sticks to small talk and her parents are polite, so it’s not a bust, but she can feel that the impression wasn’t the best.

“You didn’t like him, did you?” She asks after he leaves — they made out on the doorstep for a while, but _can you blame her_?

“It’s not _that_ ,” Dad says, “it’s just that… he sounded, I don’t know how to put it —”

“Fake,” Robb cuts him.

“Robb, _come on_ ,” Mom tries to mitigate him, but Robb just shrugs.

“Sorry,” he says, “nothing _against_ him, I guess, he was okay, but I just wasn’t feeling the sincerity anywhere. If he’s different when you date him… good, but that was _my_ impression.”

“I don’t know,” Bran says, “I wouldn’t be as harsh, but — something was a bit off, I agree.”

“Meh,” Arya shrugs, “too much of a fashion model.”

“ _What_?” Sansa laughs. “Excuse me, _your_ boyfriend has arms that belong on _Men’s Health_ covers, and you’re telling me he’s too much of a model?”

“Gendry doesn’t look fake, _he_ does,” Arya proclaims. “Other than that, could’ve been worse. But I don’t see the big deal.”

Jon looks about to say something, then shakes his head and says he had the same impression as Robb, but not _that_ much.

Fair, Sansa decides, it had been a bit awkward. But next time they surely will change their mind. They will _have_ to.

——

One month and one week since they kissed, just as she’s planning the next possible time to have Joffrey over and maybe give this whole meeting the family deal a second chance, she’s walking in the hallway when suddenly someone stops in front of her.

Someone _tall_.

“Are you Joffrey’s new girlfriend?” Mr. Tall rasps, and she looks up at him with the intent of asking _and how is that your business_.

Then she doesn’t at once because — well, Tall Guy is certainly _not_ someone you ever forget running into, she thinks.

He must be around one meter and ninety-something, which means he has a good twenty centimeters on her. He’s dressed in clean jeans and combat boots and an old leather jacket over what looks like a fairly sensible blue dress shirt, and has dark hair long enough to reach his shoulders but well-combed.

That hair frames a face with fairly strong jawline and nose and grey eyes, which also happens to be _completely burned_ on the left side — the hair doesn’t grow there, but it looks like he has enough on the good side to comb it so it covers that one side. She swallows as she notices that it’s _completely_ scarred over, covered in rough, dark red scar tissue, to the point where he doesn’t have one ear, even if whatever happened to him at least didn’t cost him the eye. She’s somewhat ashamed that her first reaction at seeing it is flinching, especially when she’s seen Jon’s hand uncovered for years and she barely even notices now, but it apparently doesn’t surprise _him_ because the moment she does his mouth twists in a fairly sad smirk and he takes a step back.

“And how is that _your_ business, Mister _I-can’t-even-bother-to-introduce-myself_?” She asks, but it doesn’t come out as angry as it might have been if she wasn’t feeling somewhat _bad_ for having had that reaction.

“It’s not,” the man rasps again, and she realizes that it’s not just his face — the side of his neck is burned, too. Maybe it damaged his voice, too? “But you might want to consider breaking it off for your own good.”

And then he moves to the side and starts walking towards the stairs.

_What the_ —

“Hey, wait!” She shouts after him. “What does it even mean? Why should I do it? And _who are you_?”

He stops at the nearest door, grabbing a key. “I don’t think you even want to know. Sorry, but I have fifty more papers to grade,” he says, opening the door and closing it behind it right in her face just as she walks up to it.

Then he locks the door.

_Fine_. Whoever this guy is, he definitely wants to play the mysterious dark and broody shtick, or so it seems. She glances on the door’s side, figuring that if it’s his office maybe at least she can learn the damned name.

The first name on top is some Ray Elder, Professor of Medieval History, but now that Sansa thinks back on it, _her_ guy definitely is too young for that position. Fine, he had _lines_ on his face, but he couldn’t have been older than thirty at _most_. No way he’s that high in the food chain.

Underneath, though, there’s _Sandor Clegane_ , Graduate Teaching Assistant.

No one else is on the list and he said he was _grading papers_ , so… it has to be him.

She considers calling Joffrey and asking him what’s the deal, but then she decides that it’s not worth it and goes back on her own way.

She should just ignore that this ever happened — who even walks up to people they barely even know to tell them to break up with their boyfriend?

Still, she can’t help noticing, the guy _had_ sounded… sincere, when he said it’d be for her own good.

_This is so weird_ , she thinks, then realizes that she’s late for her French Literature class and starts running, forgetting about Sandor Clegane or whoever he is.

For now.

——

Her first meeting with Joffrey’s mother… well, it doesn’t go _badly_ , she thinks, but now she thinks she knows what her own relatives meant. Cersei Lannister (there’s no husband or boyfriend in sight and she’s extremely proud of having raised her children on her own, that’s for sure) isn’t rude or anything, but Sansa can’t help feeling like she’s been scrutinized every other moment, but maybe she’s just being paranoid. It’s not a bad dinner whatsoever. The only thing that’s slightly off, other than Cersei obviously trying to gather if she’s good enough for her firstborn — or so is Sansa’s impression —, is that at some point a cat walks into the room and immediately turns back on its tail the moment Joffrey glares at it and says to _leave the hell already_.

“Sorry,” he says later, “it’s just, it’s my brother’s. And I hate those beasts. More of a dog person myself, I’d say.”

Sansa doesn’t say that the cat looked cute, nor asks why the brother isn’t around. “Oh, well, I’m more of one, too.” She tells him about the six family dogs they have with their great-uncle in the country — there was no way they could fit them at their city apartment — and Joffrey seems way more interested about that than the cat. He keeps on glaring at the poor thing whenever it walks into the room, and Cersei does as well, but Sansa says nothing. Maybe they both hate cats. Fair enough. She’s sure that Cersei mutters under her breath something about Tommen (that’d be the little brother, from what she grasped) needing to bring that beast at his uncle’s already since he’s there most of the time anyway, but she doesn’t press for details.

It’s not her business, after all.

That said, as he drives her home, she _does_ ask.

“Uhm,” she says, “any idea why some guy named Clegane who apparently knows you would have stopped me in the hallway yesterday?”

Joffrey _almost_ brakes at once. “ _What_? That — _he_ did? Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sansa answers. “I mean, he just showed up, said something weird and disappeared into his office.”

“He didn’t do anything else?”

“No? Not really.”

Joffrey starts the car again and tells her that they used to be friends in high school and that he kind of took pity on the guy because his brother was apparently some kind of juvie criminal and no one wanted to talk to him.

“Except that then it turned out he didn’t deal too well with having friends and he was like, too intense, and at times I thought he might turn violent, so I dropped it there. Not worth it, honestly. I didn’t even know he actually would even keep on going to school, given his grades back then.”

Sansa would have maybe protested — she’s been around her youngest brother enough to know that so-so grades don’t mean anything (Rickon’s just way more interested in playing rock music than math, which she supposes is a living, and it doesn’t make him _not smart_ ), but if the guy turned out to be volatile or something, well, she can’t blame Joffrey for having cut contacts with him, so she doesn’t press any further.

But, _well_ , she’s alone at the house, and so when Joffrey parks the car, she takes a breath and asks him if he’d like to come upstairs.

He says yes.

She’s _delighted_ of it.

——

Three day after their presentation (aced, best marks in the entire class), she’s sitting on the sofa with her father’s arm around her shoulders, crying into the third handkerchief that he’s handed over to her.

“Tell me where he lives,” Robb tells her for the third time, and last time she heard him sound so dead serious it was when they still were in elementary school and someone had told Jon something exceedingly nasty where he could hear.

“Robb,” Mom says from where she’s sitting on Sansa’s other side, “maybe that’s _not_ a good idea —”

“No,” Robb keeps on, “I’m wholly serious. Tell me where he lives and I’m ending him.”

“It’s a private residence with guards on the outside,” Sansa sniffs. “I doubt they’d let you in.”

Arya, who hasn’t said a thing until now, stands up from her chair. “No problem. We can just climb the fence, you know.”

“Arya, I think it _electrocutes_ you if you try to do that,” Sansa sobs, even if at least she’s halfway laughing.

“Just if the people guarding it check and see you, or _in general_?”

“I don’t know!” She exclaims, blowing her nose. “But anyway, you can’t be serious, it wouldn’t work and I don’t need all of you to —”

“Listen,” Jon says, “I understood that guy was an ass the moment he introduced himself, was about to give me his right hand, he noticed that I don’t wear gloves in the house and immediately handed his left while looking like he was going to catch burns from me just by touching me, but I said nothing because it was _your_ guy and I didn’t want to spoil the party. But since he was an ass and I was right about it, let me tell you, I’m absolutely not above ringing Ygritte and telling her that she needs to come here and plan how to get inside the building so that Robb can hand him a new one.”

“What —”

“Hey,” Bran says, “it’s way easier than you’d think.”

“Oh, do explain,” Arya replies, looking _very_ intrigued.

“Ygritte can just go with me to the gate and pretend she’s lost or something while making doe eyes at them and playing the _oh, my brother is on a wheelchair, we got lost and my phone battery is dead_ pity card, so they open the door to get us in and call from their office and you guys sneak in while their back is turned.”

“Told you that playing all those strategy games with me would give you nice ideas!” Rickon agrees very enthusiastically.

Sansa wipes at her face. “Guys, _please_ , he was — he’s been terrible and he was a jerk and I’m never ever falling for nice guys who just want you to do all the work for them in joint projects and then lead you on because they think it’s _funny_ , but I don’t need you all to defend my honor. I was an idiot, I didn’t see the warning signs, I blocked him, I’m just — I’ll live, all right? I’m touched that you’re actually serious about this, but — it’s _fine_. I’ll be fine.”

Robb huffs. “Just because you’re asking, but the offer’s there.”

Sansa can hear her parents silently laughing and she wants to know why they think _that_ is funny, but then someone decides to get more ice cream to forget about that asshole and she’s entirely too glad to go for it.

Still, later, before she goes to bed, her father clears his throat. “Can I just tell you something, before you go?”

“Sure,” she answers.

“I got why you fell for him, I mean, he was nice and appropriately charming, I guess, but… you deserved _way_ better than that and I know you always wanted your first to be… well, better than that.”

She’s _not_ going to cry again. “Well, one can’t have everything, right?”

“Fine, but — someday you _will_ get someone who actually deserves you. And it’s experience speaking.”

“ _Experience_?”

“Ask your mother about that, if she feels like sharing. But really, don’t waste too much time on him. He wasn’t worth it.”

Sansa nods, trying to not burst into tears again. Maybe she _will_ ask her mother, someday.

——

“Fuck,” Jeyne tells her the next day, “what a little asshole. I’m so sorry, he sounded so much better from what you said.”

“Well, I guess I should’ve understood the signs — who even lives in _gated_ communities?” She shrugs and takes a sip of her frappuccino. “Never mind that — oh. That guy _did_ warn me.”

“Wait, _who_ warned you?”

“That guy from Medieval History — I mean, before I actually met Joffrey’s family, this tall guy with scars on his face stopped me in the hallway, said that if I was his new girlfriend I was better off dumping his ass and then locked himself in his office, I think he’s a TA. And then I asked Joffrey and he said they were friends in high school but they stopped when that guy turned out to be _volatile_ , but — at this point I kind of want to ask him.”

“Hm,” Jeyne mumbles around her straw, “and he said just that?”

“Yeah. Didn’t even introduce himself.”

“And he felt the need to warn you that Joffrey was an asshole? At this point I’d ask him. I mean, sure as hell he was right, wasn’t he?”

Fair, Sansa thinks. _Fair_.

She’s going to ask. And probably to apologize to him for actually not having questioned Joffrey about it any further and assumed he was right just because, well, he _looked_ like he could be volatile.

——

The next day, she walks up to the guy’s office and knocks.

For a moment, she wonders _what if the other professor’s in and I have to explain it to him_ , but the door opens and no, it’s _him_. Still wearing the leather jacket, still _very much tall_ , still with the burned face… and looking _very_ surprised that she’s there.

“What,” he rasps, looking down at her.

“I owe you an apology,” she says.

His grey eyes go slightly wider. “What the hell should you _apologize_ to me for?”

She holds his stare. “Because I didn’t even hear you out, I _didn’t_ dump Joffrey, when he told me some fairly unflattering things about you when I asked I didn’t double check and just believed him at face value, and he broke it off after our classwork was done after telling me a list of exceedingly mean things that I’m sure I didn’t deserve, and you _did_ try to warn me, so. Still, maybe if you hadn’t disappeared a moment later I might have asked for clarifications.”

He stares at her for one long, long moment. She holds it. She doesn’t know if she passed a test or something, but at some point he shrugs and takes a step back. “To hell with it, just come in. This isn’t the conversation you want to have standing.”

She follows him inside — the office has two desks and is otherwise empty save for bookshelves, theses copies, computers and a poster for the _Name of the Rose_ movie on the wall. Right. Medieval historians, makes sense. He motions for her to sit in front of the smallest of the desks, then sits behind it. He’s holding himself fairly stiff, but she figures he hadn’t been expecting her to barge in.

“So,” he says, “I can feel you want to ask something.”

“Why did you even come up to me to — tell me to break it off?”

“Because I’ve seen in high school what happens to that prick’s girlfriends. I imagine he said that he made friends with me first and then realized I was a bomb waiting to explode and bolted before it was too late?”

“Something along those lines,” Sansa says cautiously. “I imagine it didn’t go like that?”

“No. The way it went was that no one wanted to talk to me for reasons you might imagine and everyone knew I could throw a punch, so _he_ did make friends with me… but because he wanted someone to watch his back while he was being a prick. Sadly for me, even if I was older and I should’ve known better, I couldn’t believe someone actually _did_ want to talk to me in the first place, so I fell for it, then I found out by chance and I told him to fuck off because I’d rather be off on my own than _that_. I’m not that bloody pathetic, I’d hope. Back in the day he treated _all_ of his girlfriends like that, except that then they never came back to him to argue because they didn’t want to deal with _me_ and I hadn’t realized how much of a prick he was. Then I left school before he did and went on — doing _this_ , which was the only thing I liked in high school, and I saw him around but tried to not even talk to him. It’s not good for my liver.”

“Your _liver_?”

“Ah, fuck. Well, I had a drinking problem back in the day. Don’t look worried, I haven’t had any since I realized that if I wanted to succeed in this field I couldn’t come to finals smelling like wine.”

“I wasn’t — I mean, if you were sixteen or seventeen then I was just — I wasn’t _worried_ you might be now.”

He sends a surprised glance at her, but then he shakes his head and goes on. His hands land on the table. She can’t help thinking that they’re huge, in comparison to hers.

“But I keep an eye on the crap he tries to pull. And —” He doesn’t quite look at her at that. “You seemed like a decent enough girl, so I warned you.”

“And why didn’t you warn me _more_?”

At that, he looks _truly_ like he wants to burst out laughing. “What’s your name?”

“Sansa,” she replies. “And I suppose you’re Sandor, no thanks to you.”

“I see you can read, which is way better than Joffrey can say for himself. Well, _Sansa_ , not to turn this into a self-pity party, but the few times I tried to _warn people more_ , they either ran as soon as possible or assumed I was about to turn into the Hulk or _whatever_ , and then all of them bought Joffrey’s side of the story, so I stopped bothering. It’s not as if it’s ever worked regardless.” He sounds a bit bitter at that, and she can imagine why. It’s a pity, though. He’s definitely been more straightforward with her in five minutes than Joffrey’s been in two months.

“That’s — that’s unfair, though,” she says. “I mean, people not listening to you just because — uh —”

“Because I _look like this_? You can say it, you know. I’ve heard it since I was seven,” he says, staring straight at her, and her first instinct is asking _at seven?_ , but then she realizes it really would be impolite — you just don’t ask people how they got half of their face scarred, and she’s heard enough from how Jon hates it when people ask him about the hand. She’s not going to do it.

“Well, _fine_ , maybe, but I mean, it’s — scars. It’s not like you even touched me or were, well, trying to be threatening. I should have at least asked. And the others as well.”

“ _Trying_ to be threatening?” He sounds almost amused now.

“I mean, you’re _that_ tall and so on, you might look like it without, you know, trying to, but like, you weren’t. Damn, I really am sounding wildly inappropriate, right?”

“Please,” he says. “Don’t even joke. You mean well, which is way more than I could say of most people, I don’t really give a fuck.”

“Okay, but — never mind. I’m glad we cleared this up. I just — was feeling really bad about it.”

“My pleasure,” he rasps. “And I imagine that you did all his work for that project?”

“Well,” she sighs, “he wasn’t really too good at… literary analysis, I guess.”

“And _you_ are?”

“I’m graduating in English Lit, I _might_ know something about it.”

“Really. With whom?”

“Elia Martell. It’s about modern re-elaborations of _Pride and Prejudice_.”

“ _Somehow_ , that’s not surprising,” he rasps, but he sounds… not mean, for one.

Then she glances to the right side and there’s a book with his name on it. “That’s —”

“What came out of my master’s degree and another year of research. Feel free.”

She takes it out of the pile. It’s title _The Institution of Knighthood in Between Myth and Reality_ — not her usual read, Medieval history never was her favorite subject even if she did enjoy fairytales set in the Middle Ages when she was a kid. It’s _heavy_ , for that matter — she opens it, thumbing through the pages, and it certainly seems very well-researched. From what she gathers the point was discussing whether mythical aspects of knighthood actually had a real life counterpart or not, and it actually looks interesting.

“Can I borrow it?” She asks before she can think about it.

“Wait, what?”

“Seems interesting,” she says, “but I can’t read it _now_ , can I?”

He looks really surprised at _that_ , but then he shrugs. “Sure. I’ve got some ten copies of that at home, I only keep one here for reference if I have to write an article. If you’re really interested.”

“Always time to broaden one’s horizons,” she smiles, and then someone knocks. He looks at the time.

“Bloody hell,” he groans, “right. Sorry, it’s the time of the week where the people I failed at the last final come here to complain about it and I tell them that if they don’t know the year the Roman empire fell, they can’t expect me to _not_ fail them.”

“Oh, sure,” she says, “I’ll be out of your hair and bring this back when I’m done. Uh, thanks again, by the way. I’m just sorry I didn’t take that warning.”

“I wasn’t figuring you would,” he rasps. “But you’re welcome. At least you actually asked my side of the story,” he shrugs, and she nods and leaves, letting whoever’s outside take her place.

Well.

This was entirely less unpleasant than she had imagined. And Sandor Clegane doesn’t sound _volatile_ , regardless of what Joffrey said.

She wonders if she asked for that book so she’d have an excuse to come back to his office.

_Maybe_ she did.

——

She reads it in the following week. It’s indeed extremely interesting, maybe so because she knew literally nothing about the part of the subject that was _not_ mythical. Also, it’s obvious that it was put together with a lot of work and effort — it’s well-researched, the style is not dull, he definitely has feelings concerning the fact that the darker sides of the history of the institution are never discussed or talked about, and she thinks of what Joffrey told her when she asked. _I didn’t even know he actually would even keep on going to school, given his grades back then_.

Well, _sure as hell_ he knows his way around a bibliography.

She puts the book into her backpack and resolves to go give it back to him again. She _did_ like talking to him, when he actually _let her_.

And she thinks she wouldn’t mind being friends with him.

——

She checks online when he’s supposed to be talking to students, goes on one of those days, waits for the last person to come out and then knocks on the door.

“I brought this back,” she tells him, walking in with the book in her hands.

“Did it bore you to death?” He asks, the whole corner of his mouth twitching upwards.

“No, actually,” she says. “I mean, it never was my favorite subject when it came to history but it was… very interesting? And well-researched. I mean, I’d kill to have those skills when I get to the master’s.”

“Why, don’t you?”

She shrugs. “Well, I’m starting to put material together and my bibliography isn’t… a tenth of that. Not that it _should_ be since that’s a proper book and whatnot, but it just… shows that there was some method behind it?”

“You can thank the supervisor,” he nods towards the empty desk. “When I came to him with the notes for the bachelor’s, he was about to tear his hair out.”

“How so?”

“Half of it was longhand and it’s apparently a waste of time. Well, _no_ , it was a waste of time, all things considered. Anyway, you can keep it if you want to.”

“Oh, I couldn’t, I should at least pay for —”

“ _Sansa_ ,” he interrupts, and wait, why does she like _how_ he says her name?, “that was one of the free author copies. I have ten fucking more at home. I can do without it, if you _really_ want it.”

“… Well then,” she says, putting it back in her bag. “Thanks. That was — very nice of you.”

“Please,” he shrugs. “Nothing much really.”

“Does Joffrey know?” She asks, suddenly feeling bold.

“What, that I’m here publishing research? I really fucking doubt it. Not like he ever gave a fuck about what I used to do in school, either. Wait, what did he say about it?”

“How do you know he did?”

“You wouldn’t be asking if he bloody hadn’t, right?”

“Uhm, well, he said that given your grades he was very surprised you didn’t drop out? I think. Or that you went on to university, I think.”

Sandor snorts loudly, shaking his head again as he grabs his jacket and puts it on. Right. He’s probably leaving.

“See, he never gave a fuck. My grades weren’t half bad, he just was sure they were because he never bothered asking and I never talked about it. And I had top notch grades in history, not that he ever knew. I got here with a scholarship, so they _couldn’t_ have been that low.”

“Well, I doubt he even knows the meaning of that word,” she blurts, and then she realizes what she’s just implied. “… Wow, that was _very_ mean of me —”

He _laughs_ at that, not full and not _long_ , but he does, and even if his voice rasps as he does, she thinks it does light up his eyes a little. “Please, he doesn’t even know the meaning of earning your own bloody money, not with his mother giving him access to her bank account. That wasn’t mean, that was true. And if you think I care for people telling me the politically correct thing rather than the truth, as mean as it is, your assessment is very wrong.”

“I — all right, fine, I get it,” she agrees. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I just — hate saying mean things.”

“When it comes to _him_ , I don’t think any rule of that kind applies,” Sandor answers, grabbing a shoulder bag. “I should close up, I sadly have a damned class to teach in ten minutes.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“No one told you, how were you supposed to? Well, glad you liked that book. And start not doing your research long-hand,” he says as he gets out of the room. He locks the door behind him and leaves her standing there as he heads for his class, and maybe she does take a look at him as he leaves and she thinks _well, he certainly has a nice ass_ , and then goes fully red in the face as she realizes what she’s just implied.

Damn.

_Is she into him_ or what?

——

She thinks on it the entire ride back home.

Fact is: she doesn’t know if she’s… _into him_ , but.

_But_.

If she was thinking he has a nice ass then _some_ part of her definitely is. For that matter, if you don’t count the burns he cuts a striking figure, and it’s not like the burns are _a problem_ — okay, they’re impressive, for lack of a better word, and she admittedly did flinch the first time, but just because it’s not the kind you usually see. Fuck’s sake, she bandaged Jon’s hand for two months back in the day and now it looks more or less like that except that maybe the burns aren’t _as_ bad, it’s not as if it’s a damned problem in that sense. And — he has an interesting face all things considered, and maybe he has nice eyes, too, when he doesn’t look pissed off same as their first meeting.

Also… well, she’s been _months_ with one asshole who had pretty much lied to her all along and he seems to be the exact contrary and honestly, given that most of her friends in high school bar Jeyne were all pretty much like that… it’s refreshing to be around someone who _won’t_ do that.

God, she _really_ might be a bit into him, isn’t she? Admittedly, on one side there’s nothing _wrong_ with it — she checked the info on the book, and while there’s nothing specific or too personal about him, it did say when he was born and he’s what, twenty-seven, and Medieval History is _not_ on her list of obligatory exams, so they only have six years in between them and he’s never going to be her teacher. Actually if everything goes well he might be her colleague when she’s done with her master’s, so — there’s really _nothing_ fishy about being into him.

That said, he’s — well, it’s kind of obvious he never expected her to actually talk to him or anything and he _is_ a bit intimidating, and it’s not like she can just go up to him and tell him because she has a feeling he wouldn’t buy it, not with the way he talks about the state of his face, so she has no idea if she should do anything about it or just wait for it to pass or try to be friends if anything because he’s still interesting and she _likes_ him, one way or another.

She doesn’t know. She should probably discuss it with Jeyne. Most likely she will.

——

“Earth to Sansa!”

“What the —”

“We’ve been asking you if you’re coming to Rickon’s concert this Saturday for the third time,” Arya sighs, “are you in or not?”

“Oh — right, sure, of course. Sorry, I was —”

“Thinking about some hot guy?” Rickon helpfully suggests.

“Wait, _what_ , no!” She replies, a bit too vehemently as she looks back down at her notes on _Pride, Prejudice and Zombies_ that she’s trying to type on her laptop. “Of course I wasn’t!”

“In your dreams,” Bran mutters as he most likely texts Meera Reed or _something_. “I mean, you know I did tend to look like that before I told Meera —”

“Bran, it’s _not_ that, I just broke it off with that ass, I don’t need —”

“Oh, you were totally daydreaming,” Arya interrupts her. “That’s fine, I just hope your tastes improved in the meantime because if you bring home another Joffrey no one is being nice firsthand.”

Sansa _does_ laugh at that — she can’t help it. “I don’t think that’s a problem,” she wheezes. She _really_ doubts it’s gonna go as far as that, but if she did, well, sure as hell Sandor’s _the entire contrary_.

Which would not be a bad thing.

… Damn, she _really_ is in the gutter when it comes to Sandor Clegane now, isn’t she?

Whatever. She can’t start dwelling about it _now_ , even if she supposes that at least it means she’s fully over Joffrey and the only regret she has is that she wishes she hadn’t had sex with him, but fair enough. Next time, she’ll pick a better guy.

——

Turns out that Rickon’s concert is actually some kind of cover bands contest or something — they all end up in an old dismissed factory where someone opened an artisanal beer brewery, and it’s some five bands playing five songs each and the first two move on and get a spot in some local festival. Apparently if the band’s average age is fifteen, no one blinks at _that_. She orders a martini and sighs through the first band’s set — Radiohead never were her thing and this band’s covers are on the side that slows them down even _further_ and by the end of it she’s about to fall asleep on her feet. Then while they change instruments for the second band and all of her brothers are _somewhere else_ and her parents said that they’ll take some fresh air outside, she glances at her right and —

Sees Sandor Clegane standing against the counter, looking bored out of his mind and holding what looks like root beer. For a moment she thinks she should just let it slide, especially because if Arya shows up again there’s no way she won’t make fun of her for the next ten years.

Then she decides that if life gives you a chance it’s up to you to take it and moves next to him.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, trying to not sound like a complete dork.

He looks down at her, obviously not expecting her to be in such a place. “Didn’t think this was your scene.”

“It’s not,” she admits, “but my little brother is in the… fourth band, I think. We’re here for moral support.”

For a moment, she thinks he flinched, but then she decides she must have imagined it. “Well, given that I’m here for the same bloody reason, can’t judge you.”

“A relative in one of the bands?”

“A friend from the local group home in one of the bands,” he replies, obviously waiting for her reaction to _that_ information, but she merely shrugs.

“Oh. Which one?”

“The third. They cover Iron Maiden. I guess the little brother is in the… Red Hot Chili Peppers one?” He says, glancing at the program.

“Yeah. He’s the bass player but I mean, he looks like me, you’d recognize him. I just hope your guys and _his_ guys are better than the ones we just saw because after _that_ , I’m dying of boredom.”

“Didn’t peg you for a Radiohead person.”

“I’m not. I’m not into too much any of the bands anyone’s covering except one, admittedly, but hey, support, you know?”

“… I guess,” he agrees, and takes another drink. Sansa, who was staring at his hands around the glass, immediately looks down at her own drink and takes a sip.

The next band is covering Nirvana, apparently. She has a feeling Jon is _not_ going to like that as she watches them come up on stage.

——

They’re admittedly terrible — she can see Jon somewhere on her left side grimacing openly, and Sandor is as well, and while Nirvana aren’t Sansa’s thing, _well_ , it’s obvious these people are terrible.

“Who’s the friend?” She asks as the third band comes on stage.

“Bronn? Lead guitar. They’re less bad than _these_ assholes, for sure.”

When they come on stage, she glances at the lead guitarist — well, this _Bronn_ definitely has had his nose broken once at least, and if they’re about the same age he has lines on his face that really shouldn’t belong on it, but when they start playing she has to admit it, he’s good and his band is _way_ better than the first two. At least the singer is on key. The crowd cheers for them louder than with the first two bands put together and Sansa almost wishes that Rickon’s band had come _before_ them — she doesn’t know if they can match them. Or well, she knows her brother’s pretty good, but it’s not like she’s ever heard the band all together.

To her surprise, the _are_ good. Okay, she knows maybe five songs of the original band, it was never her thing, but they certainly aren’t boring or off key and Rickon _can_ play, and she’s not surprised that they also get cheered on _way_ more than the previous two bands.

“Your brother’s not bad,” Sandor says as the last band comes up on stage.

“Thanks. Your friend’s not either.”

“Well, let’s hope they both fucking pass and that the next ones aren’t a bore because the first two were bad already,” he mutters, and she’s about to agree, but the band starts playing.

It’s a Queen cover band, incidentally the only one covering a band she actually does like.

It _sucks_ , she decides after the singer completely goes off key on _Tie Your Mother Down_ , and from the way Sandor’s grimacing, he probably agrees.

Unsurprisingly, Bronn’s band and Rickon’s pass the turn.

“Well, good riddance to the others,” Sandor says as the announcement is made.

Sansa knows she should get back to the others, everyone is leaving, but then she notices that under the usual leather jacket he has a t-shirt of Bronn’s band which actually fits him _really_ nicely, and she thinks that regardless of her frankly embarrassing ogling, she _does_ like him, some, and —

What did Jeyne say? That it was good to take initiative? Well, Joffrey kind of did it with her, so maybe —

“Hey,” she says, “since they passed I suppose you’re going to that festival they’re supposed to play at, right?”

“What if I am?” He rasps.

“Then — uh. I’d go there too, then. Maybe —” _Do you want to come with_ would sound too forward, maybe, and he’s still looking at her like he doesn’t know what to make of her, and so she dials it back a little. “Maybe we could hang out? I mean, I see my family every other day.”

“You want to _hang out_ with _me_?” He still does sound like he’s not quite believing she might.

“Why not? At most we can discuss how much Joffrey sucks.”

That _does_ make his shoulders lose a bit of tension. “Hell, why the fuck not. Fine. We can _hang out_ , if you go.”

“Splendid,” she grins. “See you in a month if I don’t before, then!”

Or, she thinks that festival is a month from now. Which means she’ll be done with her finals and he’ll be done grading papers, it’s going to be mid-June and she can wear one of those _nice_ summer dresses she bought on sale earlier this year.

She leaves the venue thinking _did I really sort of ask him out and did he really sort of say yes_.

Apparently, that’s what happened?

“Hey,” Robb asks her a moment later, “you all right?”

“What? Yeah, sure. Why?”

“You looked a bit lost in your thoughts.”

“It’s nothing,” she says, and then —

“Hey, who was that tall guy you were talking to?”

_Damn_ , why is Arya always so observant?

She sighs. “That former friend of Joffrey’s who tried to warn me off him.”

“What, seriously?” Robb asks. “Fuck, why didn’t you say? I totally could’ve shaken his hand.”

“He left already,” Sansa answers, “but if I see him again I’ll let him know.”

“Oh, _if you see him again_?”

“Arya, _don’t_ , all right? It’s nothing.”

“And you’re blushing like there’s no tomorrow, but all right then,” Robb says, and thankfully they leave her alone as Jon starts ranting about how much that Nirvana band sucked ass.

Good. Let him rant. Better anything than being nagged about this entire situation when she barely knows what to make of it.

——

She aces her finals, even if it means she doesn’t run into Sandor or has time to see if he’s in his office, and by the time she’s done with her last and only has her thesis left to worry about, she’s so ready to go out and have fun, she could burst with it.

Which is why the day of that concert, she invites Jeyne over to get help concerning her outfit.

“Wow,” Jeyne tells her as Sansa dumps all of her summer dresses on the bed, “you _didn’t_ put this much thought into impressing _Joffrey_.”

Sansa shrugs. “It didn’t seem to matter _then_? I mean, uhm, how do I say it — that felt really easy to fall into, you know?”

“And this one isn’t?”

“I don’t think he actually realized I’m into him,” she shrugs, discarding a grey dress that she should really give away already since she never wears it.

“He _didn’t_?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs, “but he’s always talking as if he’s really not sure of why am I even talking to him. And — well, I get why, I did tell you half of his face is, er, scarred over, but — I’d have figured it would be obvious after the third time.”

“So, you want to impress but without being too forward?”

“Maybe?”

“Well, then not the _golden_ sundress,” Jeyne decides, “that’s too much. Uh, maybe this?”

She hands her one that she had bought in a rush of nostalgia because it reminded her of that one dress she got for Christmas years ago — this one is also blue with a nice ribbon at the waist. It has small printed red hummingbirds on it rather than roses, but it looked similar enough and so she went for it.

“Actually… not a bad idea,” she agrees. She did like it, and it’s comfortable cloth, and if she wears it with boots and stockings she won’t have to worry about it being too light for a concert out in the open.

“Yeah, it’s really nice. Just, see that he gets it this time.”

“Maybe,” Sansa smiles back, and starts pondering on the make-up.

——

Eventually, she decides that minimal is better — she wears the dress with the one pair of blue boots she has and a jacket of the same shade, only sticks to a bit of azure eyeshadow and eyeliner, and she decides that it’s a pretty damned good outfit. Not too much but not too little. Of course, she’s overdressed in comparison to _everyone else_ that’s coming with (Robb, Arya and Jon, the others couldn’t make it), but none of them jokes about _why_ she might have dressed up as they drive to the park.

Hopefully her brother’s going to get exposure _and_ she’s going to finally… well. Straighten things out with _Sandor Clegane_ , most likely.

Thankfully no one tries to ask her to stick close after they get the schedule — it’s all cover bands and Rickon’s the first and Bronn’s the third or fourth, so _maybe_ after she could just see if he wants to take a walk around or _something_? If she finds him in the first place, of course. She heads for a stand selling drinks first, gets a Coke regardless of everyone else around her getting beer, and then she turns and — oh. There _he_ is.

He’s still wearing the leather jacket, but now he has older, ripped jeans that definitely show off his legs and okay, listen, Sansa has come to terms with the fact that she’s apparently _quite_ into him at least when it comes to looks, and she _really_ has to take a breath or two before approaching him just after he sits down on the ground, it’s not as if it’s starting before another hour or so.

“Well,” she says, “you did make it.”

“What — _the hell_ ,” he says, looking up at her from his Coke, “er, shit, you were serious.”

“Sure I was,” she says. “So, how many people you failed this semester?”

“Too fucking many,” he sighs. “Did you bring something to sit on?”

“… I didn’t?” She realizes.

He looks at her, then says something like _to hell with it_ and scoots over.

_Oh._

She thanks him as she sits down, not moving _too close_ but not staying on the edge either. Fine. _Fine._ She needs to make small talk here. Why is he still glancing at her from his good side as if he’s nowhere near sure of what he’s supposed to do here?

“So what, your students don’t like to open their books?”

“Oh, _mine_ do, but it’s some fucking ten of them, everyone else has to take it but doesn’t come to class and then assumes I’m making it easy for them. Good luck about _that_.”

“Seriously? But why wouldn’t they attend?”

“Oh, they think it’s my supervisor still doing that class, but he only handles the master’s now, he’s dumped the bachelor on me for a couple years, but the website hasn’t updated the information.”

“How is that not surprising in the slightest?”

“Don’t ever try this career if you assume that the administration department is halfway competent. Anyway, they all show up in hordes because they’ve been told it wasn’t a _hard_ class, and my supervisor was way nicer than me, but I don’t see the point in not failing people who want to waste my time.”

“Well, if they don’t study they should fail,” she shrugs. “I’m just sorry Joffrey didn’t fail _that_ class because I did all the work.”

He makes a sound that she _thinks_ was amused. “Don’t worry, he can pay his way through not failing the others up until a certain point,” he says. “Not that he’s not going to work for his grandfather’s damned company anyway, but at least some basic satisfaction.”

“You could be in his graduation committee.”

“I don’t think so but _maybe_ I’d pay for it,” he admits, and after then they actually _do_ talk — she gets actually good thesis-writing advice when he realizes she’s actually interested in it, she finds out they generally like different things (she’s not into metal music and he’s not into mostly indie songwriters, but she hadn’t pegged him for an Alanis Morissette fan from the get-go) but that they’re both reasonably into Queen, which _kind_ of surprises her.

“Is it going to be _terribly_ rude if I say you don’t look the part?”

“I _know_ I don’t,” he says. “And they’re not even my favorites or anything, but they’re not bad. Also, it’s exactly the kind of stuff that ends up on the mixtapes people exchange where I come from.”

“You’re telling me _Bronn_ is into Queen, too?”

“I’m telling you that Bronn ended up at the group home I was staying at after his previous host decided that his stint wearing pink and a fake mustache and handling her precious vacuum cleaner on Halloween was something against bloody public decency or whatever. That said that’s not the kinda cover band he’d fit into.”

“… I guess not,” she agrees. “My eldest brother’s more into them than anyone else around the house. He’d probably be down for Halloween dressing up, if Bronn ever needs another three people to do it again.”

“I’ll make sure he knows.” He drinks more of that coke after glaring at some guy nearby who seems very surprised that someone with his looks isn’t having beer like everyone else around. “Asshole,” he mutters.

“It’s not like it’s his business,” Sansa says. “Also, I guess we can be lame together.”

“No beer for you?”

“I don’t even really like it,” she shrugs. “I mean, I’m not crazy into alcohol but if I really have to, I’ll go for less bitter things.”

He grunts something in approval and drinks some more. Well, it’s twenty minutes until the whole thing begins, they’ve talked until now, it hasn’t been awkward, and while she _has_ noticed that he’s making sure they don’t accidentally touch, it’s fairly obvious that it’s not because he _doesn’t_ want her there.

_After this is over, maybe I can just straight-up ask him for his number. Can’t be too complicated, right?_

Right.

She can do this.

She _can_.

——

Or at least, that is the plan until the second to last band comes up on stage.

Thing is: the people _after_ both Rickon’s and Bronn’s bands weren’t bad, and since he seemed to be into them she didn’t even suggest to leave and take a drink or something, and at that point it’s just two left, so she figures they might as well stay until the end. Robb, Arya and Jon left already, but she texted back that she’d be fine coming home on her own; she doesn’t have to worry about catching up with them, so she figured she’d wait it out until the end.

Then two things happen.

First, the guy next to them lights up a cigarette for himself, then for the girlfriend, then for everyone else in their group, and she notices Sandor tensing up some every time the lighter is passed over in his immediate vicinities, but she figures it’s because maybe he hates secondhand smoke. She doesn’t like it either, but it’s not like they can move, since they’re pressed in between a fair amount of people.

Second, someone in the guy’s group brings out the weed and lights it up for about everyone else, too, and one of the girls tries to roll her own joint. It’s not working too well, because she almost makes it fall on the ground.

“Here,” one of the men says, “take a tissue and put it underneath, at least it’s not on your hand.”

He hands it over just as the person nearby is passing the lighter around. Turned on.

The tissue immediately catches on fire, and while one of the guys curses and proceeds to put it out, he moves it to the side so it’s not in the middle of their group…

And almost gets it into Sandor’s face, and at _that_ moment he shoves Sansa out of the way _and_ the guy, and then —

“Fuck,” Sandor says not so under his breath, and then he turns on his back and about crashes into the people behind them — someone tells him to mind his fucking business and what’s his problem, but then they shut up at once and move out of the way and he quite literally shoves everyone else out as he tries to get out of the crowd.

_What the_ —

“Is that your boyfriend or _something_?” The guy behind them shouts as Sansa tries to get her bearings.

“A — a friend,” she shouts back as she grabs his jacket and the piece of tarp he brought to sit on that were still on the ground.

“Well, tell him to get a fucking grip because that _hurt_ ,” the guy says.

“And you could avoid shoving things on fire into people’s faces, you know,” she tells him before leaving and trying to make her way through the rest of the crowd before they close in again. It takes her some five minutes before she’s finally out of it, still holding to his jacket and her backpack and wondering _where_ the hell he ended up and what’s going on. She notices a few people smoking weed on the side and she heads over.

“Hey,” she asks them, “sorry to disturb, but — did you happen to see someone heading off… somewhere around here? A guy, very tall, long hair —”

“The one with the burn on his face?” The only girl in the group asks.

“Yes,” Sansa confirms.

“Tormund, didn’t he go _that_ way?” She nods towards her left.

“Yeah,” the guy confirms. “Pretty sure he looked shaken up, we asked him if he needed help but he said it was better to fucking not to and stalked off.”

“Thanks,” she tells them, and runs in that direction. She takes the only path and goes forward, figuring that he can’t have gone that far, especially if he was upset, and she’s starting to think if it was because of the guitar on fire thing, but it’s not like she can do anything about if she doesn’t find him first, right?

Damn, of course this place is large enough to host a music festival, so it’s not _small_. She slows down, takes a look around (good thing there are lights on), tries to see if she can find some more people to ask but this part of the area seems to be empty. But the path also doesn’t diverge so unless he went off to the side somewhere he can’t be too far, and since it’s dark on the side —

She hears a sound that sounded like the bad kind of crunching from somewhere further down the line. She picks up some speed and ends up in a small clearing and there _he_ is, sitting on the ground in front of some tree.

For one moment, she’s relieved.

Then she realizes that given that his right hand’s knuckles are bleeding he most likely punched the nearby tree’s bark and she can see that his shoulders are shaking and he’s taking heavy breaths and muttering something under his breath that she _really_ can’t distinguish, not when his voice is so low in the first place.

For a moment, she thinks of how dismissive Joffrey had sounded when he said he was _volatile_ , and fine, _this_ isn’t good, but — it’s not as if he’s hurting anyone but himself, at most he pushed people trying to get out of the way.

She clears her throat.

“Can — can I help?” She asks, and she can see him going completely still.

He says nothing for a long moment. “You should leave,” he finally answers, and she doesn’t like how he sounds as if he’s purposefully trying to not let it show that whatever _this_ is is affecting him. She can see that his left hand is trembling against his leg.

“What if I don’t want to?” She moves closer, not doing anything and standing out of reach. He clenches his bloodied fist once, twice, but he doesn’t punch the tree again. He’s also breathing _really_ heavily. He doesn’t tell her anything, still staring down at the tree and taking deep breaths in a way that heavily suggests he’s distancing them on purpose.

She takes a step forward, lets the tarp and her backpack fall on the ground and puts the jacket back on his shoulders, lightly, just in case she’s making this worse, but then his back relaxes slightly and she puts a hand on his shoulder, not pressing too much but grasping at it lightly through the leather.

He doesn’t tell her to _not_ do it, so she just stays there and doesn’t move as he catches his breath and it slows down to a normal pace, and she really doesn’t like that his hand is bleeding, but it’s superficial and it can wait. After a while she tentatively grabs at his shoulder tighter, and when he doesn’t tell her to _not_ do it, again, she moves behind him, puts the other hand on his free shoulder and starts kneading lightly, noticing that he’s so tense his muscles feel like stone.

A rasped sound leaves his throat. “You don’t have to,” he says, and now he sounds _tired_ , but hasn’t she heard _that_ same song once?

“And what if I want to?” She keeps on doing it, still keeping her touch light, but he tentatively leans back into her for a moment, so she figures she can’t be making it worse.

“A lot of people would think you’re fucking bonkers,” he says.

She shrugs. “Including Joffrey?”

At _that_ , he does lose a bit more tension. “Maybe,” he croaks.

“I recognize he was an extremely bad life choice.” Sansa kneads just a bit harder. “But really, if you _don’t_ want me to —”

“Do you think I get many volunteers for _that_ kind of task?” He interrupts, and it sounds harsh, but also — a bit wistful?

“Well, I don’t mind. And I’ve had this conversation once already, for that matter, so — I’m not lying.”

“You _did_?”

She wonders if she should move under his hair and see if she can massage the lower side of his neck, he looks _really_ tense, but then she decides that maybe it’s not the best idea, and keeps to the shoulders. “My — well, he’s my brother for all it counts, so.”

“So he’s _not_?”

“He’s a cousin who’s always lived with us, but we didn’t know that one side of his family was… pretty damned _bad_ until he came back from a visit with his entire right hand covered in second-degree burns.”

Sandor goes still again. “ _What_?”

“He never said the entire story, but his grandfather was apparently… _volatile_ ,” she finishes. “I think he put that hand over flames going on in the fireplace. I spent a month bandaging it and he kept on saying I didn’t have to, except that I wasn’t doing it because I _had_ to.”

He exhales, nodding — he doesn’t speak for a long time and she keeps on massaging his shoulders.

“Well,” he finally says, “I hope you weren’t planning to stay until the end.”

“I — oh. No, don’t worry.”

“Shit. Teaches me to go places where people set shit on fire,” he groans.

“Shouldn’t you look at that hand?”

He glances down at it. “Barely even hurts, but I guess so.”

She could let him go home to do it and call it an evening, but — he also sounds still tired, and like he hates that _whatever this was_ just happened, and she’d feel like shit leaving him to handle that alone.

“Can I help with that?”

He turns over and finally looks at her, and she really can’t see him too well in the bad light — there’s just the moon here — but he doesn’t tell her she doesn’t have to, at least.

“I live five blocks over,” he says. _Wait, is he_ — “If you want to, suit yourself. But you don’t —”

“Have to, I know. What if I do?”

He stands, puts on the jacket properly and takes the tarp from the ground, heading for the nearest exit. She follows him out and when he says nothing as they walk, she doesn’t ask for further information either. She doesn’t think pushing would be a good idea, and so she walks along until they reach a building that looks old but not _run-down_ , at least. He takes out his keys with his left and opens the gate, tells her it’s the first floor and she follows him up the stairs. He opens the door for the apartment on the right — Sansa walks inside and closes the door behind her just before he hears barking coming from the hallway.

“Yeah, yeah, in a moment,” Sandor says as he stands up and rubs the head of a large black Italian mastiff who also has a nasty white scar on his side. “There’s the living room, I’m coming.”

He nods at the door on his left and then disappears into what Sansa figures is the bathroom. She walks inside the aforementioned living room, and… it’s _nice_ , she thinks. Not large, there’s just a sofa, a table with a closed laptop, a couple of chairs and no television, but it’s covered in bookshelves, most of which look like history nonfiction, except that he has some _three_ shelves only stocking… cheap western paperbacks and a few pulp novels. There is a framed _Stagecoach_ poster hung on the only shelves-free wall, the ground is covered in a cheap but clean red carpet and for one it’s _way_ cleaner than Joffrey’s room had been from what she remembers. No empty beer bottles on the ground and no empty plastic cups of coffee on the desk, for one. She sits on the sofa — it’s definitely old but it’s comfortable, she thinks, and a moment later he walks inside the room with what looks like a first-aid kit in his left hand. He closes the door — she can hear the dog moving outside.

“I don’t mind him being in, if —” She starts, but he shakes his head.

“That dog doesn’t really do well around blood and I’m just glad he didn’t sniff it,” he says. “He can handle staying outside for now.”

“What’s the name?” She asks as she reaches down for some disinfectant.

“Stranger,” Sandor replies as he lets his hand fall in between them on the couch.

_It barely hurts_ , he had said.

Given that he punched the tree hard enough that there’s blood all over his fingers and he tore away a sizable amount of skin on his knuckles, she has her doubts.

Well then. She starts cleaning the blood off, starting from the top, moving her other hand under his so she can hold it up.

“I have one as well,” she says. “I mean, a dog. Just not here.”

“Not _here_?”

“Well, it’s six of us. We all got one for our tenth birthday, but we can’t keep six of them in the house, they all live with my great-uncle in the country. But it just takes an hour of train to get there. Mine’s named Lady.”

“Huh. What kind of?”

“Northern inuit,” she says as she moves her piece of cotton further down.

“Somehow it doesn’t sound too bloody unlikely that’s how _you_ would call your dog.” That sounded almost amused, though, so she chalks it as a win.

“Doesn’t sound _bloody unlikely_ either that you didn’t buy your dog from some renowned breeder.”

“Was that obvious?”

“Breeders don’t sell scarred dogs, do they?”

“… Right, should’ve figured you’d have seen it.” He says nothing more for a long while — Sansa goes through another two small pieces of cotton dabbed in disinfectant before she’s finally done _cleaning_ the entire hand, and she doesn’t like how now that it’s cleaned up she can see raw flesh underneath at least three of his fingers and half of the outer side.

She reaches for the gauze first, placing it on the top.

“Guess I owe you an explanation.” His voice sounds lower than usual, and he’s not looking at her.

“Not if you don’t want to,” she says. “I mean, I told you about Jon. I think that the only two people who know what _really_ went down there because _he_ told them are our brother and his girlfriend.”

“Given that I most likely freaked you out and that you’re here bandaging my fucking hand it’d be the least.”

“You _did_ freak me out,” she tells him, “but it’s fine. I mean, _you_ were freaking out more. It was the whole fire thing, wasn’t it?”

“Might’ve been.” He sighs as she wraps up his fingers separately. She reaches for the bandages. “Ah, fuck it, might as well have it out of the way.”

“… Sorry?”

He shakes his head. “What did Joffrey tell you about my _brother_?”

“… That he was a juvenile delinquent?”

“Yeah, well, understatement. I mean, _yes_ , he was, and he got locked up for raping one of his classmates when he was young enough to _not_ be tried as an adult, but this?” He gestures at the left side of his face. “Told you, I was seven.”

Her hands stop at once. “You did say,” she says. “And it’s still turning my stomach over."

“Well, that’s a better reaction than usual.”

“Than _usual_?”

“The first thing most people ask is usually _what did you do to provoke it_ , or some equally obnoxious bullshit.”

“If you were _seven_ what could you even done that warranted — _that_?”

“Nothing, if you’re not my fucking brother. But since he _was_ — I found this old toy of his somewhere and took it because it’s not like I had seen him using it in years, he found out, he didn’t like it. We had a coal stove back in the day.” He shrugs. “By the time anyone heard, he had already grabbed me and pushed _this_ against it,” he gestures at his face, “long enough that I spent months in the damned hospital.”

“But — if he got arrested _later_ —”

“Oh, my father lied and said my clothes caught on fire or something equally ludicrous and I understood that telling a different story couldn’t have worked. Of course, I lost one year in school and _that_ was why everyone assumed my grades were shit.”

Sansa knows that her fingers are minutely shaking as she ties the bandages closed. She should let his hand go. She doesn’t quite do that.

“I’m —” She starts.

“ _Don’t_ say you’re awfully sorry, I heard that bullshit from about anyone who ever got this far and it’s good for fuck all. Sure, you most likely _mean_ it, but I’ve heard it a hundred times too many from people who didn’t.”

“Well, your father shouldn’t have lied, for one.”

“There’s a reason why we haven’t talked since they arrested Gregor and I found out all the joys of the fucking foster care system,” Sandor says, and wait, he’s _not_ taking his hand away either. “That said, good riddance. That group home was a hell of a lot better than knowing Gregor was in the house. Anyway, the worst of it was when I was in high school, but I’ve got fucking issues with fire, that’s why the only thing I spent good money on in this house was the electric stove and _that_ is why I was freaking the fuck out.” At _that_ , he finally looks up at her. For a moment she thinks she can’t handle how intensely he’s staring at her, but if she looked away — now that’d be exactly what he’d expect, _right_?

“It was an entirely legitimate reason to freak the fuck out,” she finally says. “I mean, if you punched that idiot next to us who kept on passing around that lighter I wouldn’t have blame you.”

“Yeah, well, might have happened. It was in high school, someone did it on purpose. There’s a reason why people thought I was _volatile_.”

“They _knew_?”

“Someone went to the library, found an old newspaper article and found out. Or — well, they found out how it happened, not that Gregor did it, obviously.”

“Christ. I was about to say you were around some serious assholes, but then again, _Joffrey_.”

“That was around the time they arrested Gregor, for that matter.”

“And — you said that you actually tried to warn others about Joffrey, didn’t you?”

“As if _anyone_ would listen to me in high school and as if any other girlfriend of his I tried to warn didn’t run off the other way.”

“If you want my humble opinion, none of them has much of a taste.”

“Fuck — _wait_ , what?”

For a moment she feels kind of proud that she’s taken him by complete surprise, but — well. Fine. Maybe it’s time she spills the truth, especially when hearing this story just made her feel even surer that her first impression of him had been colossally wrong.

“Let me tell you, I saw Joffrey most of the time for _months_ and you’re way better company, just to say one.”

“People don’t usually think I’m _good company_ in the first place, you know.”

“I beg to disagree.” She holds his stare, thinking that she _really_ likes the shade of gray of his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Fine. Time to just tell him. “For that matter, my plans for the evening included — doing what my best friend’s been telling me to do for a while and ask for your number.”

At _that_ , she changes her mind — she hadn’t taken him by complete surprise _before_ , because she’s definitely doing it _now_.

“You wanted to ask for _what_ ,” he repeats.

“Your number. One, because I actually _might_ like hanging out with you and today was nice, regardless of the ending, and I really need better friends. Two… well, that’s what you do when you’re interested in someone, right?”

She wonders if he’ll move his hand away from hers. He doesn’t, but he’s still looking at her as if this was _not_ the way he thought this conversation would end.

“You’re _interested_ ,” he says.

“What if I am?”

He stares some more. Then —

“The last time someone was _interested_ in that sense, it turned out they had some kind of… Florence Nightingale complex or whatever the fuck people call it, and if it’s the case —”

“Not to be always talking about my brothers in contexts they don’t belong to, but I think Bran burned that out of me a long time ago.”

“Wait, that’s not the one with the band.”

“No, he was at the first concert. The one on the wheelchair. He has _extremely_ clear ideas about how much he loathes that attitude. I don’t even offer to help him wash the dishes these days, but believe me, one of the first times we talked back in uni I was _absolutely_ thinking stuff that wasn’t — chaste. Not exactly. I don’t know how that other person was, but — that’s not it.”

“So _how_ is it, exactly?” He asks, and he’s not telling her to fuck off, for that matter his mouth is slightly parted and his hand still has _not_ left hers.

Well.

_Fine_. If she has to _show_ it, she damn well will, and so she shakes her head, moves up closer to him on the sofa, reaches up —

Oh. She has the _right_ hand free.

“Can I —?” She asks, before she ends up touching the burned side of his face.

“… Yes,” he rasps a moment later, and _fine_ — she puts her hand on it, _very_ gently, moves her fingers on the back of his head in between that thick, black hair, and _tugs_.

Turns out, kissing someone whose mouth is partly scarred is slightly different because it feels uneven, but — but she likes that it’s rougher than the unscarred part, and when she presses just a bit more his lips part and she runs her tongue along the lower one, reaching the scarred part and moving over it before leaning back. He doesn’t kiss her back, but he doesn’t even stop her, and when she leans back she lets her thumb’s fingertip brush across his scarred cheekbone. She can feel the bone underneath, but — honestly, it’s nowhere near icky or anything. She just hopes it doesn’t hurt, which is why she keeps it light, but still.

“ _This_ is how it is,” she says. “Before you ask if I minded _that_ , no, I didn’t.”

“Fuck,” he says, “no one actually punched me in the fucking face before and I’m not making it up, am I.”

“… If you’re going about _possibly making this up,_ are you saying you _wanted_ me to?”

“My asshole of a brother ruined my _face_ , not my damned eyes.”

“I don’t know,” she says, “I think I can handle it.”

“Oh, _fuck all_ ,” he says, and then he has a hand on her neck and one at the back of her waist and he’s dragging her _forward_ and a moment later she has both legs around his, both his hands are dragging her close and his mouth is on hers and _he_ ’s kissing her, not letting her kiss him, and —

Oh.

He’s forceful, but not too much, and the way he crashes their mouths together, it’s _obvious_ he wanted it, and when his tongue touches her lips she immediately opens her own to let him in, and damn but Joffrey never kissed her with so much intent, never mind that the way his hand is cupping the small of his back holding her to his chest feels good, no, _great_ , and she moans into his mouth as she clenches her legs around his thighs. And then — he slows down, losing a bit of momentum, but he doesn’t break the kiss, and it turns slow, almost gentle even, and no, Joffrey’s never kissed her _that_ thoroughly and damn but she wants to do it again.

And _again_ , so she leans back down after taking a breath and does, and now _he_ moans into her mouth.

“Fuck,” he breathes, “right, no one punched me.”

“I really think not,” she says, and maybe she should stop here, but then she looks at her right hand, still barely touching the scarred flesh underneath. “Does it hurt?”

His throat works up and down once, twice. “Depends. I’d hurt if you did punch me in the face or the likes, but _that_? No. Why?”

She lets her fingers brush along his cheek.

Then she turns her head, leans down again.

She stops for a moment, figuring that if he doesn’t want her to he’ll say no, but he doesn’t.

Well, she’s been wanting to do it for a damned long time or so it seems, she might as well take the leap, and she kisses his cheekbone. It feels — rough, rougher than his mouth, but at the same time it’s softer and it’s nowhere near a _bad_ feeling, and she can feel that his heartbeat is spiraling out of control for how close they’re pressed together. She’s about to do it a second time —

“Fair warning,” he rasps, “you do that again, I’m done holding back.”

He was _holding back_?

“I never said I wanted you to,” she says, her mouth barely touching his cheek, and then she leans down and kisses it _again_ —

A moment later, he lets out a groan that _might_ wake up the neighbors if they’re sleeping on the other side of the wall, and then he’s standing up and bringing her with and _oh_ , he’s holding her up with just that one arm around her back and she immediately hooks her legs around his back, and _oh_ , it feels as if she’s weighting nothing but then again to _him_ she most likely doesn’t, and she moans into his mouth as he slams it against hers while pressing her against the wall way, _way_ gentler than she might have imagined.

Since she doesn’t exactly need to hold on to him, Sansa just reaches up and cups both of his cheeks as she kisses him back, and she should probably take a moment and breathe but she _can’t_ because this is way, _way_ better than anything she’s dared fantasize until now, and when he finally moves back to catch his breath, she can feel that his heartbeat is still out of control, not that hers has lowered down any.

“If that’s what you do when _not holding back_ ,” she says, “I’m interested.”

“One wouldn’t think,” he says, “that you’d be interested in fucking against the wall.”

“Right _now_? I — ah, could be persuaded,” she admits. “But I don’t have condoms here.”

“I do,” he says. “In the bedroom, though.”

_Well then_.

“I definitely could be persuaded,” she says, and then he’s moving away from the wall, somehow managing to kick the door open even if he has both hands on her back, and they’re kissing again as he moves into the door on the other side of the hallway — he closes it before the dog can get in and then he lowers her down on a large, soft bed. She glances at it as he turns his back on her and rummages inside a drawer — it’s king-sized, but given how tall he is she figures he might want to splurge on it, and the blanket on top is hand-knitted. She can see more books on the walls and more paper spread around the only desk in the corner, and she takes the chance to take off her boots. She’s just kicked off the second when he turns back to her and slams the condom on the nightstand, takes off his own shoes and sits on the bed.

For a moment he looks like he wants to ask her if she’s _really_ sure.

She figures she should just kill that argument here and there. “If you’re about to ask me if I’m sure, save it.”

“I might’ve been,” he says, but then he brings his legs on the bed, moving on top of her — she reaches up for his shoulders, feeling muscle under his shirt, and damn, her dress feels tight now, _everything_ she’s wearing feels like that, and so she starts opening up his shirt and he lets her, and she can’t help staring at all that expanse of muscle as she runs her fingers along it, and then he’s shrugging the shirt away and he’s only in his jeans while she’s entirely too dressed, for her tastes.

She’s about to open the dress herself, but as she stands up he reaches for the zipper on the back, lowering it and getting her out of it, and she can see that he stops for a moment when he notices that she actually wore matching lingerie pieces — she put one of her favorite sets, both bra and panties in blue lace, which also matched the stockings.

“Did you — _seriously_ dress up or you’re the kind of person who does this every other day?” He asks, sounding like he finds it endearing but he also had not expected it whatsoever.

“I dressed up,” she says. “I mean, I didn’t plan to go as far, not that I’m complaining, but — why not?”

He looks at her in the eyes again. “I’m flattered, but next time, you don’t need dresses with little birds on to _impress_.”

“I don’t?” Had she actually ever _flirted_ with Joffrey? She doesn’t think so.

“I’m hardly the kind of guy you need to impress.”

“Hey, I _did_ dress up to meet Joffrey’s mother and the likes and it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, why shouldn’t I dress up if I’m planning to ask out someone I, uh, happen to like?”

He snorts, his hands reaching down and pulling off her stockings, slow enough that they don’t rip. “Fair,” he agrees. “Still — never bloody mind that.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I want to discuss fucking _Joffrey_ right now.”

She can absolutely be on board with that. “You know what, _please_ let’s not mention him for the next few hours at least?”

“My damned pleasure,” he rasps, leaning down and kissing her again, and his hand is on the small of her back again as she reaches down and undoes his belt, throwing it on the side — he manages to get off his jeans and underwear without quite breaking the kiss and she moans when he undoes the clasp on her bra.

_Finally_ , she thinks as she lets it fall to the ground — it was becoming constricting, same as those stockings, and when she finally catches her breath he’s naked and she only has her panties on.

She feels her throat go dry as she finally takes a good look at him without nothing on, and maybe she’s more than a bit thrilled that she wasn’t wrong before, when she had felt his dick through his jeans and she _had_ thought he was getting hard; he _is_ , and if she was her former friend Margaery she’d probably say out loud that she needed him in her yesterday, but she’s _not_ and — _well_. In retrospective, it’s not like sex with Joffrey had been that great, and knowing that he wasn’t really into her had helped put that into perspective, and it had been mostly her getting him off thinking back on it; _now_ she’d rather they take their time, and damn, she said a moment ago to not mention Joffrey and here she is, thinking about him?

She reaches out and clamps her hand over the condom.

“Or maybe,” she says, not knowing which hidden part of herself that she has never been particularly in touch with until now but which apparently wants her to say embarrassing things and _mean_ them, “we could mention him one last time just so that you know _exactly_ where _you_ should impress me.”

“I could —” He says, nodding towards her hand.

“You _could_ , but I think I’d rather,” she says, opening the condom and sitting up.

“Well then, _how_ should I impress her highness?”

She throws away the condom’s wrapping and rolls it on him, slowly. “I don’t know, our former common acquaintance barely even did anything worth remembering,” she says, not moving her fingers from the top of his dick the moment she’s done putting it on him. “I thought it was good because he was my first, but it really was _not_. Maybe,” she goes on, wrapping her fingers around the head and stroking slowly, “you should make it memorable.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans as she jerks him off, _again_ , “ _fuck_ , well, _doable_.”

“Actually,” she says, “maybe if we ever run into him again, I could totally brag about it?”

For a moment she feels she arm she has around her shoulders tremble, and she wonders, _did I say something wrong_ —

And then his hands are tugging her panties downwards and he’s moving back the covers harshly, pushing her on the sheets (which, she notices, are actually _soft_ and not cheap at all), and oh, _his hand can cup her entire hip_ , she thinks as he grabs her _there_ , and then he moves downward and she opens her legs understanding what he means to do

( _which Joffrey actually never did_ )

and then he’s leaning down and burying his face in between her legs, his tongue running along the inside of her leg before touching her clit, and then he pushes it inside, _harder_ , and she moans as she parts her legs wider, feeling that scarred tissue rub against the inside of her right leg as his tongue laps at her clit once, twice, thrice, and then she forgets any restraint she might have had about grabbing his hair because she _has_ to hold on to something. She reaches down, grasping at it, and he doesn’t stop her when she pulls and tugs him _further_ — actually, he slows down, takes his time running his tongue on her clit and slipping it inside her, and at this point she’s beyond caring if the neighbors hear her scream his name because it feels _great_ , and she feels him moan when she grasps at the back of his neck tighter, her right hand running along the scarred tissue underneath his chin. She feels her toes curling as he keeps on licking around her clit, and she can feel her blood rushing downwards as she grasps at more of his hair —

That is, until his lips suck at her clit, and she can _feel_ the rough side of his mouth on it, and at that she about screams — she doesn’t even know _what_ but she knows that it feels better than great and her entire body feels on fire, and it doesn’t take much longer for her to clench her legs around him just slightly and for a rush of pleasure that she definitely _never_ felt before to hit her leaving her breathless, and _oh_ , she can feel it when she comes on his face, her grip going slacker as he leans back.

He’s smiling _very_ knowingly as he does, but then again the entire lower half of his face is wet. God, _she_ feels still wet for that matter, and when she glances down at his dick she can see that he’s even harder now.

“You know,” he rasps, “that was a _very_ nice song you were giving me just now.”

“A very nice — _oh_ ,” she grins, and opens her legs further. “Did you like it?”

“Maybe I did,” he says, moving on top of her again, and oh, she’s a respectable C-cup but the moment his hand touches her breast he can cover a good part of it and she likes how rough his fingers feel against it, and she moans a little when he squeezes, but he doesn’t do it roughly.

“Well, if you want me to give you another I’m entirely willing,” she breathes as she hooks a leg around his back, and that definitely _didn’t_ sound very self-assured, but it apparently doesn’t matter, because then he wipes at his mouth, leans down, kisses her again as he moves an arm behind her, lifting her upward, and —

_Oh_. Is he —

_He is_ , she realizes as he lifts her from the bed just as she hooks the other leg around his back, and a moment later he’s inside her and he doesn’t even need to go slow because she’s so wet it’d be embarrassing if she wasn’t way, _way_ beyond embarrassment right now.

“Memorable enough for you?” He asks, thrusting inside her slowly as she hooks her legs around his back tighter.

“You — know how to _impress_ a girl for sure,” she manages to say, just before he does it again, and _again_ , and then she realizes that he can and _will_ hold her up until they’re done, and so she stops holding on to his back, grabs at the sides of his face and runs her tongue along the left side of his face, once, twice, thrice, feeling every crease and burn that she can reach, her fingers running over what’s left of his ear, and she can feel that the longer she does it the more erratic his thrusts get, but he still doesn’t let her fall and his grip doesn’t falter whatsoever, and she moans against his cheek, not holding back any sounds since he _did_ seem to like it, before moving her mouth downward, until she’s brushing her lips against the burned part of his throat.

And — on one side, she _likes_ how it feels under her lips, even if he obviously hates it, but on the other she _can_ feel that the more she does it the more he likes it — he’s buried fully inside her now and she clenches around him, once, twice as he thrusts. And the fact that the more she kisses him _there_ the more he seems to get _close_ is turning her on even more, and —

Oh, to hell with it. She leans forward, grasping a bit of that scarred flesh on his neck inside her teeth, biting very, very softly, and then sucking at it, feeling how rough it is against her mouth, and a moment later he groans loud enough that his entire chest shakes with it, and then he’s moving back on the bed, arching in and slamming his hips downward as she keeps her legs wrapped around his back, his head going against her shoulder as he goes still for a moment and comes as well, and it’s just _too much_ and that rush hits her again a moment later, and while it’s not as strong as before it still feels like she’s being swept in some kind of whirlwind she _absolutely_ doesn’t want to get out of, not until he’s holding on to her and keeping her back against that soft bed, and the way he says her name as he’s coming is just — it’s low and she can barely hear him and he doesn’t really make _loud_ sounds most of the time, but she doesn’t think she’s ever heard anyone say it so — reverently, maybe?

She doesn’t know, she can barely think straight, but what she knows is that if he’s somehow thinking that she’s not interested in doing it twice, she’ll correct that assumption as soon as he tells her. For now, she lets herself relax against the covers as he pulls out of her and throws away the condom, and for a moment she can see that he’s worrying about what the hell he’s supposed to do now, but she has no time for this and so she moves an arm around his neck and pulls him downward.

A moment later, he tentatively wraps an arm around her waist.

She breathes in a couple of times, opens her eyes and looks at him, and there’s something very, very soft in the way he’s staring back at her, and she moves closer as she raises her hand and cups his scarred cheek again.

“All right,” she says, “now _that_ was memorable.”

“Good to know I can still show people a good time,” he says. “So, how did it rank?”

“I think I _really_ want to run into Joffrey just to rub in his face that half a minute with you was better than two months with him. By the way, I still don’t have your number.”

“I’d be a right idiot if I asked if you’re _really_ sure that you want it?”

“I’d be a right idiot if I didn’t ask for it when it was the one thing I was hoping to bring home tonight,” she says, finding his leg with her ankle. “And I should probably text my brothers that I’m not going back home, unless you want me to get a taxi?”

“… And why the hell — if I wanted you to go home I’d fucking drive you myself,” he says, “but if you don’t want to —”

“Not really,” she interrupts him.

“Then I’d be the biggest fucking moron in existence if I told you to fuck off, little bird,” he says, and then he almost looks surprised at himself for having even said _that_ — “And I guess that was _really_ inappropriate.”

“Hey,” she says, “it was cute. What was that for, you like my _singing_?”

“Oh, for — _maybe_ , and says the person with birds all over her dress.”

… Fair point, she concedes. “Well, I liked it. By the way, you’re outdoing my previous and sadly only boyfriend again,” she grins. “Never gave me a cute nickname or anything.”

“My dignity is fucking shot to hell,” he groans.

“I _liked_ it, again. Hey, I always thought it’d be nice to run into a guy who’d do that. I mean, come up with —”

“If you never use _that_ word again I could be amenable to use it in the future,” he interrupts her, and she _would_ love to stay here a while longer but she can hear the dog whining on the other side of the door.

“Shit,” Sandor says, “he probably needs to eat.”

“You know what, you can feed the dog, I can text Robb that I’m spending the night and then we can resume? Because I was _rather_ enjoying it.”

“What, the afterglow? Fuck me, fine. If you want to take a wash, the bathroom’s just near the kitchen.”

The kitchen is the last room at the end of the hallway — Sansa finds her bag, texts Robb that she’s spending the night here and heads inside. She finds a towel and takes a quick shower, and honestly, she’s delighted to find out that while it’s not exactly out of some furniture catalogue he keeps the bathroom _clean_ and the sink isn’t full of hair (Joffrey’s was, for one, but given the horror story Margaery used to tell about her various boyfriends’s bathrooms, _well_ , she thinks she might have lucked out here).

She considers going back to the bedroom in the towel, then she thinks _I just had the best sex of my life while he was holding me up against the wall, now that’d be ridiculous_ , and so she lets it be. She leaves the bathroom to find Sandor outside it, and she doesn’t miss that he sends her a _look_ as she walks out of it.

“If you want to wear something to bed, it’s inside the room,” he says before he takes her place inside the bathroom. She goes back to the bedroom and finds out that meanwhile he put all her clothes on a piece of furniture outside of the dog’s reach just in case, _and_ he left on the bed this Blind Guardian t-shirt that does seem a bit too small for him. She puts it on and it’s large enough that it arrives at half her legs — he walks inside some five minutes later.

“Figures it’d fit you,” he says.

“Does it even fit _you_?”

“It did when I was in high school,” he sighs. “Then again, first concert I ever attended, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.”

“What, with Bronn?”

“Maybe. We sneaked out,” he says as he heads for the wardrobe. “Could’ve been the first time I actually had fun since, well.” He gestures vaguely at his face, then puts on a pair of pajama pants he had grabbed from inside a drawer while Sansa gets under the covers and joins her a moment later.

She takes her phone from the nightstand, figuring she’ll turn it off, but then he plucks it out of her hands.

“What —”

“Well, didn’t you want my number?”

“… Sure thing I do,” she groans in embarrassment as he punches it into the keyboard and hands it back to her. She saves it, calls it and closes it after one ring, he’ll find it tomorrow, then she shuts it off and puts it back on the nightstand.

“Good,” she says, “not that I’m complaining I didn’t get it earlier.”

“Sure you aren’t. Good thing it’s Sunday tomorrow,” he says, turning off the light.

She moves under the covers and manages to stick to her side for exactly thirty seconds. She rolls over, putting a hand on his stomach, and he takes a breath as if to ask her something, but then he doesn’t and he moves his arm back around her waist.

All right. This is _absolutely_ better, she thinks as she closes her eyes.

Maybe she _could_ get used to it.

——

The morning after, she wakes up to someone frantically knocking on the door, which is very unpleasant because Sandor’s head was in the crook of her neck and he actually looked like he was sleeping fairly well, and he groans as he wakes up as well.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he says, “it’s eight-thirty in the morning on a fucking _Sunday_ , if it’s someone tryin’ to convert me they better hope whatever god they believe in exists for real.”

She laughs, she just can’t _not_ , and follows him out of the room as he says that he’s coming and to just stop knocking already. The dog whines from the living room, he probably sleeps there, but he doesn’t wake up — good for him, Sansa thinks, and then she forgets about the dog because Sandor’s opened the door and there’s _half of her damned family outside it_.

Actually, _no_.

There’s her father, Robb, Jon, Bran and Rickon — why are they even doing here?

Sandor must have recognized the resemblance at least with her brothers because whatever it is he was about to say dies on his tongue as he stares at all of them with a halfway panicked look.

Then she realizes that she’s in front of all of them only wearing _his_ shirt.

Oh, _damn_.

At least none of them looks like they’re about to defend her honor or _something_ equally stupid.

“Uhm,” Sansa says when she realizes that none of the men present will talk first, “do I want to know _how_ you’re here? I didn’t, like, _tell Robb the address_.”

“You didn’t,” Robb says. “But _he_ knew.” He nods towards Rickon.

“… _What_ ,” Sansa blurts.

“Well,” Rickon says, “do you think I don’t talk to people who come on stage after me? _His_ friend from the other cover band —”

“ _Bronn_?”

“Well, he said I looked like this girl his mate from high school or _something_ was totally _enamored with_ that he was talking to at that contest we did, I went like wait, that’d be _my sister_ if your friend is the tall guy with the leather jacket she was talking to at the factory, so when Robb informed us you were staying over at some _guy’s_ I figured it might be him, so I called Bronn and asked him where we could find you and he spilled the address.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Sandor mutters. “Uh, I mean —”

“Fair reaction,” her father interrupts. “Actually, I told them that this was unnecessary, but —”

“Excuse me,” Robb says, “after that arse  _Joffrey_ maybe I wanted to be sure this wasn’t another very bad life choice.”

“Oh, for — Robb, that’s sweet, but he’s the guy who warned me to _dump his ass_ , so maybe you could have, you know, _called_ before showing up with the cavalry?”

At that, Robb looks mortified —

For _one_ single second.

“Couldn’t you have just _said_?” He grins, and then she’s sure he doesn’t try to pat Sandor on the back or something because the body language is screaming _don’t_ , but his entire attitude changes in a moment. “Man, did you really warn her off that prick?”

“I tried,” he answers, looking like he doesn’t even know how to take this entire situation. “She didn’t exactly listen to me but I didn’t do anything to press the issue.”

“Well, I should have listened,” Sansa says.

“And how did you know to warn her off him?”

“… We used to run in the same circle in high school and he was an asshole even back then,” Sandor answers.

“Let me guess, he pretended to not mind the state of your face but looked at you like he might catch the same ailment while hanging out with you?” Jon asks.

“And how would you know such details?”

Jon shrugs, takes off his glove and raises his hand. Sandor’s eyes go wide as he most likely realizes that _he_ is the infamous brother she was mentioning before. “He did the same with me, but I suppose it was worse with you,” he says. “Condolences. I had to stand him for like two hours, can’t imagine having him in high school.”

“Yeah, well, I survived, but — thank you?”

Okay. This is _maybe_ going somewhat better than she had imagined. Then she realizes that it’s ridiculous that they’re all standing out and she’s pretty much naked and —

“Guys,” she says, “maybe, uh, you could, I don’t know, _come inside_ or wait downstairs and we can have a coffee or _something_ after I dress? Rather than doing _this_? Because this is ridiculous.”

“Oh,” Sandor says, “just — you can go grab your clothes, they can just come inside. There’s nothing open at this hour ‘round here anyway. I’m warning it might be cramped.”

“No one was expecting a palace,” Bran says as he wheels himself in.

Sansa runs into the bedroom before she can hear jokes about Joffrey actually living in one, finds her underwear which is thankfully still wearable, puts on her bra and stockings first and the dress after, tries to put her right foot in the left boot for a minute before realizing where she’s going wrong. She shakes her head, puts on her shoes the right way, fixes her hair as best as she can and walks into the living room, not knowing what to expect.

“— that’s better taste than most of my lineage here,” her father’s saying as he nods towards that movie poster on the wall. Right. The western movie. Fair — none of them actually likes westerns even if both her parents do.

“Hey,” Rickon interrupts him, “that’s _old_.”

“See what I have to deal with,” Dad groans.

“Oh, here you are,” Bran tells her as she walks inside the room, “you _could_ have said that you found yourself a guy who doesn’t ask you how you ended up on a wheelchair within the first five minutes since you’ve met.”

Sandor looks embarrassed to hell and back but grunts something in reply and then tries to get the topic back to the western movies, except that by then Robb has been distracted from his inspection of the bookshelves.

“By the way,” he says, “in comparison to how you looked the morning after _Joffrey_ was at our place, it’s fairly obvious he’s a better lay.”

Sandor almost chokes on the water he was drinking. Her father does the same. “ _What_ ,” she replies very feebly.

“Oh, come on,” Robb goes on, “the morning after your former prick of a boyfriend was in the house you were looking like someone who _thought_ she got a nice lay and your hair was all pristinely done, now you didn’t even brush it, you didn’t even notice that you lost your dress’s belt and you can’t wait for us to leave you alone, I think it’s fairly obvious.”

… The thing is that she can’t even tell him he’s wrong because he really is _not_ and if she survives the next ten minutes maybe there’s a chance she won’t find her own number blocked when she tries to call Sandor next time.

“Robb —”

“Hey, my point was finding out if you were making a colossal mistake, you obviously aren’t, I don’t have to threaten anyone, my job is done.”

Sansa is going to _die_ here.

“Robb, there was _zero_ need for this and you bloody know it,” she says.

“Oh, did I finally hear you swear? Good, I was starting to wonder if it’d ever happen.”

“Guys, for — you didn’t even let _him_ get dressed!”

“Fair,” Rickon agrees, “I think we should just bring the poor dog for a walk while he does and then we should do the third degree properly. Someplace with breakfast. Unless the dog has issues with —”

“He’s fine,” Sandor interrupts. “Also if he hasn’t tried to chase you out yet he’ll be fine if you bring him.”

“Splendid. See you in twenty?”

“It’s probably a good idea,” her father says. “Sorry about barging in but Robb didn’t take the thing with Joffrey _too_ well.”

“Oh, I get it. I mean, he’s just — looking out for her, no offense taken. But I’m still gonna rip Bronn a new one.”

“Fair. Sansa, we’ll be back in twenty. And don’t worry, no third-degree.”

“You’re no fun at _all_ ,” Rickon protests — Sandor hands him the dog’s muzzle and leash, and they’re out of the apartment some five minutes later.

The moment they close the door, Sansa lets out a breath she had no idea she had been holding.

“God, I’m _so_ sorry,” she sighs, “I had no idea they’d show up or I’d have told them I was staying at Jeyne’s or something.”

“It’s fine,” he says, “and honestly, I — it was _weird_. But it’s not on them.”

“What? They showed up without even calling first, I think —”

“Hey, you got burned with that little prick, they just want to make sure you’re fine. Guess I get it. I mean, it’s not like I’d know anything about _that_ , but I have a feeling theirs is the normal reaction.”

“Seriously, were they —”

“Listen, your father _tried_ to do the whole part where he asked me if I was serious about this because if there’s one thing he wanted for _you_ was to end up with someone who wasn’t going to treat you like trash, and I told him that I was if _you_ were. _Robb_ had already decided I was fine after learning I hated Joffrey more than he did, you heard what was his name, right, _Bran_ , the youngest one had already decided I was fine because apparently Bronn fucking said I wasn’t that kind of asshole. Ah, and _Jon_ just stared at me all along and at some point before you showed up he asked me to come out in the hallway, told me that he had no idea of how I ended up with half of my face burned but he could _slightly_ relate and he thought it was _impressive_ I had my shit reasonably together, and he didn’t even ask any further, for that matter.”

“He hates it when people ask him.Well, that was a reason why I never did, ask you I mean.”

“Well, he can fucking relate on _that_. So, they all gave me their damned blessing and then you showed up when the conversation had just verged on the light side, but well, it was — nice of them to actually worry that much. I really _didn’t_ mind. Except for the time.”

“I’ll tell them to wait until ten in the morning if they feel the need to do it again.”

“I suppose it’d be a fucking dumb question if I asked _so it’s sure there will be a next time_ , huh?”

“Yes,” she cuts him short, and fine, he was supposed to get dressed, but she figures that pointing out how much she wants a next time to happen won’t hurt, and so she kisses him again, her hands going to his hips, and it feels as good as it had yesterday, and —

“Did you say you were serious as long as _I_ was?” She asks when she moves back.

“I didn’t tell your _father_ out of everyone, but do you think I share with just anyone _that_ one story after I invite them home? If I just want sex I don’t do it here.”

“Well, I’ve been wanting that number for a hell of a long time.”

“ _Well_ , Bronn might have nagged at me about this entire fucking situation for a hell of a long time.”

“Good,” she says, not hiding to sound that it was exactly the answer she wanted. “Then I guess you can get dressed and we can meet them for coffee. Don’t worry, if _all_ of them like you it’s definitely not going to be a third-degree. My sister might go for it, though.”

“You have a _sister_ , too?”

“Yeah, and she punches harder than all of them, but don’t worry, I’m not letting her. Actually, just tell her you hate Joffrey, you’ll be good.”

“Seems like it’s my get out of jail free card.” He stands up, heading for the bedroom. “Well, I’m getting dressed then. By the way, if you _really_ want to brag in his face about _this_ , feel free to.”

And then he shuts the door behind him. Sansa knows she can’t stop grinning, but she thinks there’s nothing wrong with it at all, and she has a very, _very_ good feeling about this. One that she definitely hasn’t had before.

 

(Later, her father will clear his throat on the drive back home.

“You know,” he will say. “There’s a reason why I didn’t press too much when it came to his _intentions_.”

“Really? What?”

“The main romance in his favorite movie is between a wanted cowboy who falls for the town’s prostitute that was pretty much kicked out of it out of outrage to decency and when she told him that he didn’t know who she was and so he couldn’t possibly proposition her, he replied that he saw everything he needed to know in the two days they shared the stagecoach. And then they ran off across the border leaving civilization behind or something along those lines. I _honestly_ doubt that someone who uses up an entire wall for _that_ movie plans on being an asshole.”

“How _romantic_ ,” Robb will say. “Sansa, for as much as he likes to write about the contrary, you did find yourself the knight in shining armor, didn’t you?”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” Sansa will answer, embarrassed out of her mind, but she won’t be able to stop smiling to herself.)

 

“You know what,” she says, standing up and moving outside the bedroom door.

“Yeah?”

“We should totally send Joffrey a fruitcake or something and thank him for making sure we’d run into each other. Maybe Robb could deliver it.”

She can hear him legitimately laughing, and she thinks he _never_ did it before. Too bad he’s behind the door, but that can be remedied next time.

“You know what, I’d like to be there to see it, but maybe you can ask him before he thinks of going all third-degree on me, how about that?”

“You know what,” she smiles, leaning against the door, “I think it’s a deal.”

Maybe they could _both_ be there for it.

Yes, Sansa decides, she likes that plan, and then he opens the door, and maybe it takes them five minutes to notice that her brothers and father have been back and knocking on the door because they were too distracted making out, and no one dares complaining when she tells them that they brought it on themselves.

Then again… she did choose colossally wrong the first time round when it came to men, but for the rest of the ones she’s surrounded with, _well_ , she thinks she might have lucked out for real, hasn’t she?

 

End.


End file.
